The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
‘There is a free lunch’ By Ed Stannard
5th annual blitz spreads the word in city
NEW HAVEN — It’s summertime, and the kids are playing hard and getting hungry. But there’s no free lunch at school.
But there are free lunches — and breakfasts and suppers, too — if only children and their families knew where to get them.
That’s why End Hunger Connecticut!, along with the New Haven Public Schools, the Connecticut Food Bank and others met up Saturday at De Gale Field on Goffe Street and scattered throughout the city for the fifth annual Blitz Day, bringing fliers and information cards to the city’s residents.
As Executive Director Shannon Yearwood told those in their orange T-shirts, “In our society there is a saying that there’s no such thing as a free lunch. People take that really to heart. We’re here to say and tell the community, ‘Yes there is, and it’s for your kids and we want them to come and hang out with us.’”
According to the Food Resource Action Center, Connecticut is the ninth-best state in providing nutritious lunches to children during the summer, with one child out of five who receive school lunches participating.
“It’s a little bit better than nationally, which is one in seven, but we can do better,” Yearwood said. “We’re missing so many kids with this information. So that’s why we need to come out today.”
Tyisha Walker-Myers, D-23, president of the Board of Alders, said, “We all know the children out there who are hungry and we all have them in our respective wards.” A child who is hungry can’t learn or read well, she said.
Will Clark, chief operating officer of the city’s public schools, acknowledged that the system is experiencing budget problems, but noted there are 76 sites set up for free lunches, with more to come. “It’s going to grow and we will move and we will adjust,” he said. “We are in a fight for resources, folks. We are in a fight for these programs. This is no joke. They want to cut these programs.”
Joe Rodriguez, a member of the New Haven Board of Education and deputy district director for U.S. Sen. Richard Blumenthal, D-Conn., echoed Clark, saying, “We are in a fight at the federal level, and it’s our small but powerful delegation from Connecticut that’s leading the fight.”
Clark said the program has expanded into Hamden and credited United Way of Greater New Haven, First Student bus service as additional partners.
The sites are located at schools, parks, day-care centers and other locations, he said. “You don’t have to feel bad; you don’t have to feel any shame” at receiving lunch at the sites, he said.
Gail Sharry, food service director for the city schools, said the meals follow “the same component-based requirements for lunch” as the free school lunches. “You need a protein of some sort, whole grains, fruits and vegetables and a milk,” she said.
Yearwood stressed the importance of the “blitz.” “You leave school, it’s the end of the year. You may have lost your job, you may have been in a car accident … and you don’t necessarily know that the safety net exists,” she said.
The teams, in their “orange army uniforms,” as Yearwood called them, left the park to fan out across the city to distribute the fliers, which explained how to find sites where meals are served: Call 211, text ctmeals to 877877 or go to www.ctsummermeals.org.
One group was composed of Katie Alderman of Milford, Mai Kader of Berlin and Justin Farmer of Hamden. Alderman and Kader, members of FoodCorps, work in the city schools to help pupils make good food choices. Farmer is a member of the Hamden Legislative Council but grew up in the Newhallville section of New Haven. “This is home, and I also realize not everyone gets the same opportunities to get to school, to get to college, the opportunity to have a stable home,” he said.
Most of the residents of the apartments the trio approached weren’t home, so they stuck an information card in the door jambs. But some were out on the stoop.
“Our kids were the ones who started with the truck first,” about six years ago, said Goldie Wooten, whose children are 10 and 12 and get lunches at the Stetson Branch Library. She said her children are “hungry five times a day.” The free lunch “helps with one of the five because they’re hungry all the time because they’re playing.”
Patricia Parker, whose girls, 2 and 6 years old, were playing with their 8-year-old cousins, said of the program, “Since it’s the summertime, I think it’s more important because they’re running around and more hungry.” She said it also helps financially.
Kader, a graduate of Southern Connecticut State University, said working with New Haven’s schoolchildren has been fulfilling. “I really enjoy it so far,” she said. “I like talking to people about what’s going on in the community. I really love New Haven.”