Healthy Summer Meals Make a Huge Impact!
Crossroads supports Texas students impacted by the $450M funding cut for summer meals by supplying them with the nutritious food they need.
Field days, high school proms, and graduations are over - a signal that summer break is here. But some low-income parents aren’t prepared.
Did you know that out-of-school-time is the hungriest time of year?
Here’s a fact that may shock you - Texas recently turned down $450 million in new federal funding for summer feeding programs. This funding would have provided low-income families with an additional $120 per child to cover meals during the summer months.
Benaye Wadkins Chambers, Crossroads CEO, believes ensuring every person has daily access to nutritious meals is an urgent and solvable problem. With your gift today, Crossroads can meet the need now and beyond the summer months.
Without this additional support during summer break, families currently struggling to keep up with soaring cost-of-living expenses will skip meals or eat less nutritious food, which has a devastating, long-term impact on kids.
For thousands of Dallas families, the summer months are not a season of carefree road trips and sun-soaked picnics with the neighbors. Instead, summer is defined by uncertainty, anxiety, and stress.
According to No Kid Hungry, 65% of families reported struggling to afford enough food each month for their children.
Claudia has been utilizing our Community Market each month since March. She is a single mother with a 16-year-old son. After being laid off by her company, she is now working part-time and making $600 a month—money which she uses to pay her bills. After her expenses are paid, she has less than $70 left for groceries for the entire month.
Claudia does not qualify for SNAP. She represents just one of the many families who rely on Crossroads to access enough food to eat. School has just ended, which means no more free breakfast or lunch. Now Claudia must contend with how she’ll ensure her son gets the two additional meals at home.
Dallas County has the fourth-highest number of food-insecure children in the nation. One in five children does not have enough food to eat, which impacts their growth and development, their mental health, and their academic performance. Food insecurity diminishes their dreams, and it limits their opportunities.
“Food insecurity is a thief which robs children of their future.”
With your support and the rest of the Crossroads community, we can provide relief to families experiencing food insecurity. Your support will help our families access additional food that children might otherwise miss because of recent cuts to SNAP benefits and Texas HHS turning down the proposed funding.
Through our Summer Feeding Program, all children and youth ages 4–18 can receive approximately 15 extra pounds of nutritious food - enough to cover the meals they would have been receiving at school.
We cannot meet this need without the critical support of community members like you. Your help ensures that students have enough food to eat throughout the summer months so that they can return to school nourished and ready to learn. A gift of $120 will provide 30 meals to the students we serve.
This summer, Crossroads, and our food distribution partners expect to serve more families than we usually see each week. We need your help NOW to meet the demand for food assistance. All families with children deserve to enjoy a summer without worrying about how they’ll eat today, tomorrow, or next month.
From June to August, Crossroads will provide an additional 15 pounds of food for each child in the household at no cost to help families replace the missed meals they would have received at school.
Please donate to support our Summer Feeding Program today. Your gift of $500 can cover an entire summer of missed meals. A monthly gift of $50 can help families recover from food insecurity throughout the year.
You can make your donation by clicking here or using the button below. Thank you for ensuring our families and their children start the next school year well-nourished and ready to learn.