Healthy Kids Summer Lunch Program In Granbury

"This is one of the most caring communities I've ever seen!" That was the comment heard this past summer from the single mom of three small children at one the Healthy Kids Summer Lunch sites. In fact, it's nothing new to hear comments similar to this throughout the summer months in and around the Granbury community. On Thursday, June 3rd, the Healthy Kids Summer Lunch program will begin it's fourth summer of feeding the children of the greater Granbury area a tasty, hot, nutritious lunch.

The Healthy Kids Summer Lunch Program is an outreach initiative of Operation School Supplies in cooperation with a community coalition of local churches and the Granbury ISD Child Nutrition Department that serves lunches to any child, age 18 and under throughout the summer months when school is not in session. All a child has to do to eat is just show up at any one of the sixteen lunch sites located throughout the greater Granbury area.

Healthy Kids started four years ago in response to a growing issue of children in our community - particularly those children that participate in the Federal Free and Reduced Lunch program during the school year - being food insecure during the summer months when school was not in session. Through the work of the GISD Child Nutrition Department, the Healthy Kids program is paid for through a combination of state and federal grants specifically targeted at child nutrition for all children, not just children coming from low income households. That means that all children, age 18 and under may participate in the Healthy Kids program.

Each day, starting the week that school is out and continuing throughout the entire summer, hundreds of lunches are prepared at Granbury Middle School by the GISD Child Nutrition Department and are packed in special thermal lunch containers. The lunches are designed to be "kid friendly" while being high in nutritional value. Menu items such as chicken nuggets, steak fingers, burritos, and sweet potato fries just to name a few are among the kids favorites. Each meal comes with a hot entree, a vegetable, a fruit, a healthy dessert, and a choice of either juice or milk.

Starting at around 10:30 each morning, volunteers from more than a dozen area churches converge on Granbury Middle School to pick up the lunches for their respective lunch sites. Each church has an appointed pick up time and serving time at their lunch sites. After the lunches are picked up, literally hundreds of church volunteers head out into the community with their lunches to feed the children in their adopted neighborhoods. Summer 2009 Healthy Kids fed approximately 32,000 children in the greater Granbury area.

But there is so much more going on than just simply feeding a child a healthy lunch, these children are being loved and relationships are being built not only with the children but with the entire family. Many of the churches have expanded their part of the program to include arts and crafts, Backyard Bible Clubs, and learning games at their lunch sites.

This year's Healthy Kids Summer Lunch Program kicks-off on Thursday, June 3rd and runs through Friday, August 6th. If you would like more information on how you can help with or participate in the Healthy Kids program, you can contact Micky Shearon at 817-408-5273 or Norma Wright at 817-279-0313.