Summer Meals in Los Angeles's Koreatown
Posted by Katherine Van Steenburgh on Tuesday, August 24, 2010
During our most recent summer meals trip, the Development Director of the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank, Flori Schuzter, and I attended lunch at the Koreatown Youth Community Center in Los Angeles.
This Center is one of hundreds of partners that the Los Angeles Regional Food Bank supports during the summer and year round. Healthy lunches are provided daily through the Food Bank and organizations like this one depend on this help. Share Our Strength’s role is that we provide money in the form of grants to the Food Bank, who in turn supports the Center.
Betty Fong, the program manager of the Koreatown Youth Community Center in Los Angeles told Flori and I that almost all the children who come to the center qualify for free and reduced meals during the summer. Betty and her team surveyed the parents of the kids who attend the summer programs and found that most of the families could not provide lunch for their kids during the summer. And none of the schools in the area operated summer meal programs. Since there was this big need in the community that needed to be filled, the Center started this summer meals program.
If it wasn’t for the partnership with the Food Bank, the Center wouldn’t be able to provide summer lunch and these kids might have to go without. Thanks to leaders like Flori, Betty and their teams, this isn’t the case.
Here are a few photos from lunchtime at the Koreatown Youth Community Center.
August 24, 2010 | 1 comment(s) | Tags: california, no kid hungry, summer meals
Comments
1 reader comment so far.
Thanks for pointing out the role of the food bank in this--people need to understand that food banks are much more these days than "just" distributors of food to families or other groups that give it directly to families. They provide programs like summer meals programs, after-school programs that provide meals and snacks, and backpack programs that send needy students home on Fridays with food for the weekend, until their next school meal on Monday.
And what adorably happy faces you've captured! Keep it coming, Katherine!
Posted by Cate Puzo on August 24, 2010
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