Rural and Hungry

By | August 6, 2018 |
Kristen Hanks, who works in the Fort Osage school district cafeteria program, hands out lunches at Susquehanna Baptist Church in Independence, Missouri, a government-funded summer meal site. For children in the Kansas City metro area, food insecurity rises in the summer, but food sites like these are rare in rural areas. (Lindsay Huth | Flatland

  The rush hits at noon. That’s when kids start pouring into the gym at Susquehanna Baptist Church. On a scorching Wednesday last month, they lined up to choose their lunches: pizza, subs or PB&J. Most picked pizza. The Independence, Missouri, church is one of more than 350 summer food sites around Kansas City that…

Read More

The Kansas summer-meals program isn’t reaching enough children. Some advocates are working to change that.

By | March 17, 2015 |

The state of Kansas and four nonprofit organizations are seeking federal approval to conduct an experiment that they hope will boost participation in a summer meals program that now is serving only a fraction of eligible children. Led by the Kansas State Department of Education, the coalition is asking the U.S. Department of Agriculture to temporarily waive some rules so that it can conduct a demonstration project to feed needy children in rural parts of the state when school is out for the summer.

Read More