School’s Out For the Summer, Now What?!
Summer Solutions for Hungry Children
We often get the question this time of year, “What happens to Cultivate’s backpack program in the summer?”. The end of the school year often brings additional stress to food-insecure students who wonder where they will get their daily meals. Cultivate is committed to supporting the same number of children in the summer as we do during the school year.
Like our school partners, however, we have to be creative about LITERALLY meeting the kids where they are. We’ve established several solutions covering all three counties that we serve;
St. Joseph County
- South Bend Community School Corporation provides meals to students throughout the summer at various locations including schools and parks. Cultivate provides backpack meals at many of these locations offering children a take-home option similar to the school year.
- We partner with the Boys and Girls Club of St. Joseph County to provide hot breakfasts and lunches throughout the summer.
Elkhart County
- We provide frozen meals to be distributed through the Boys and Girls Club of Elkhart County.
- We are forging a new partnership with Goshen Health. With locations at local parks, volunteers will help distribute our meals to students in easy to reach locations like Shanklin Park. Through this program, students will come to the parks every day of the week where they will be fed and learn about health and nutrition. Every Friday they will take six Cultivate meals home with them! Our meals will be sent home with nearly 500 students in the Goshen community.
Marshall County
- Our partnership with Marshall County Head Start to provide backpacks continues year round
We admit that it isn’t perfect and we plan and hope to do more. As we continue to grow our mission, we continually plan to serve additional children. You can help by sponsoring a child’s backpack today! Click on the button below to get started. Thank you from Cultivate and all of our student partner organizations.
