One in five kids in New York City doesn’t know where their next meal will come from, which is why City Harvest creates initiatives like the “Skip Lunch Fight Hunger” fundraising competition and the “Feed Our Kids” food drive, which started on May 12. Schools, organizations, companies, and the NYC Fire and Police departments all come together to donate to City Harvest. This food will be distributed to food pantries, soup kitchens, and community food programs in all five boroughs that help feed families in need. The drive will run until Father’s Day, June 16.
Last year’s food drive raised nearly 200,000 pounds of kid-friendly food for families, which is especially important going into summer as kids lose the chance to get free breakfasts and lunches at school. For many NYC kids, school is the only place they are guaranteed to get a balanced meal. Previous food drives have collected as much as 260,000 pounds of food, which is enough to feed 2,800 kids throughout the city for the entire summer.
The most-needed items are canned fruits and vegetables, canned proteins like tuna or beans, peanut butter in plastic jars, packaged macaroni and cheese, soups, hot and cold cereal, and juice packs. The best items to donate are nonperishable items that families can stock up on.
This year’s “Feed Our Kids” is especially important, representatives from City Harvest say, because the Trump administration has taken measures to scale back the updated food nutrition standards the Obama administration put forth, which ensured that students would be served healthier meals with less salt and more whole grains at school. This could have the biggest impact on kids in low-income communities–which underscores why families need access to healthy food at home.
