TROTWOOD — Ohio’s SUN Meals program launched this week, providing free breakfast and lunch to children in need, with Trotwood-Madison City Schools sponsoring a local effort.
The program aims to ensure families in underserved communities have access to meals throughout the summer, with the first grab-and-go meal pickup scheduled for Wednesday.
Funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the initiative is preparing approximately 300 meal packages at Madison Park Elementary in Trotwood.
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Each child participating in the program will receive five breakfasts and five lunches every week to address food insecurity during summer break.
Kaydee Bayes, Student Nutrition Services Supervisor for Trotwood-Madison City Schools, explained that the program is designed for underserved areas where traditional daily meal sites are not easily accessible.
“There’s a lot of houses through this area, but not a whole lot of areas where we can have a place where the kids can congregate and take advantage of those summer daily meals, so having this pickup is really going to help address that,” Bayes said.
The SUN Meals program expands upon the school district’s existing daily food program, which has served breakfast and lunch at various community locations for about 15 years, predating COVID-19.
“We have provided the daily meals, serving breakfast and lunch at a number of locations that the community for several years pre-COVID,” Bayes said. “This is probably 15 years now that we’ve been doing this, and so adding this parent pickup just is expanding our program to try to help out those people who can’t make it to those other daily sites.”
Trotwood-Madison City Schools will hold its initial grab-and-go meal pickup between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. on Wednesday. The school district will adjust the number of meals needed on a weekly basis, with the program continuing through July.
The program will operate through July, with meal numbers adjusted weekly based on demand.
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