Due to ongoing disagreements with government monitors from Indiana’s Summer Food Service Program, the nonprofit changed the way it distributes food to better comply with state regulations.
In four of the county’s low-income neighborhoods, volunteers kept distributing the meals in an “ice-cream truck” style, as they always have.
In the other five neighborhoods, volunteers set up congregate sites where the children could come and eat the meals on-site.
In order to receive state funding for a meal, the volunteers were required to actually see a child eating it. If the child took the meal home, the state would not pay for it presumably fearing that the parents would eat the food themselves, the director of Community Kitchen, Vicki Pierce, told the Indiana Daily Student in a previous interview.
Pierce explained that by utilizing both methods of meal distribution, the organization staff hoped to find the best of both worlds: serving more meals, receiving more reimbursement and arguing less with state monitors.
“The reality wasn’t what we had hoped,” the press release reads. “We served fewer children AND received much less reimbursement. We found reinforcement for our long-held belief that congregate sites are not the way to serve children in our community.”
The release stated that all but one of the congregate sites served significantly fewer meals than the team had previously been able to serve when delivering food directly to homes.
Even when the children did come to the sites, only 45 percent of them remained on-site to eat the meal.
“We were at a point that we needed to try it EXACTLY the way the state wanted," the release reads. "The result: It doesn’t work.”
These activists are not the only ones upset with the state regulations. In order to close the hunger gap during the summer, a new bill has been introduced in the U.S. Senate.
The Hunger-Free Summer for Kids Act, which has received bi-partisan support, is meant to give states more flexibility when funding summer meal programs. It would allow Indiana to pay for meals delivered directly to children’s homes and for meals the children consumed away from congregate sites.
States the could also provide low-income families with grocery store credit during the summer months.
The release explained that if the bill receives enough support in the Senate, it will likely become part of the larger Child Nutrition Reauthorization legislation that Congress will vote on this September.
In order to support the bill, the release encouraged concerned citizens to sign a petition at http://bit.ly/CNRFB0815.
Annie Garau
