ABOUT THE COLUMNIST
Gracie Bonds Staples is an award-winning journalist who has been writing for daily newspapers since 1979, when she graduated from the University of Southern Mississippi. She joined The Atlanta Journal-Constitution in 2000 after stints at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, the Sacramento Bee, Raleigh Times and two Mississippi dailies. Staples was recently promoted to Senior Features Enterprise Writer. Look for her columns Thursdays and Saturdays in Living and alternating Sundays in Metro.
To help:
MUST Ministries: mustministries.org or email summerlunch@mustministries.org
Action Ministries:Text LUNCH to 41444 or www.actionministries.net, 770-905-9191
Atlanta Community Food Bank: acfb.org or text FOODGA to 877-877
My lunch will be perfect if not all that inviting: Greek yogurt spiked with blueberries, walnuts and flax seed meal.
Yum.
If for some reason I decide I want my favorite sandwich, peanut butter and jelly on wheat, or leftovers from last night’s dinner, no problem. I have more than enough choices.
What’s troubling, though, is there are nearly a million school-aged children throughout Georgia who don’t get to choose what they eat because they have no food at home.
Sure, they qualify for free or reduced lunch during the school year but that’s the point. Access to a healthy meal, or any meal at all, sometimes ends the minute the last school bell rings and they head home for the summer.
What a shame.
The good news is that last year Georgia increased the number of summer meals served by more than one million by working with a variety of agencies to identify new sites for summer meals.
Parents can find the sites through an easy to use texting system and GPS enabled mapping, said Danah Craft, executive director of the Georgia Food Bank Association.
Less than 15 percent of Georgia’s children who rely on free and reduced price lunch during the school year have access to nutritious meals during the summer, said Craft.
Research shows proper nutrition in childhood plays an important role in a young person’s physical and mental growth. But, according to hunger experts, one million people in Georgia are classified as ‘food insecure’ meaning they have limited or uncertain access to adequate food and are at risk of hunger.
With near constant news reports of abducted kids, sexually abused children, and, yes, charity fraud, it’s understandable how even the most decent people can reject being burdened with one more thing.
But if there were ever a time to fight that numbing feeling we get when we’re on overload, this is it.
In a community busy building football and baseball stadiums, children remain the poorest among us; and the younger they are the poorer they are.
"Hunger doesn't take the summer off and we're realizing now that it doesn't take weekends off," said the Rev. Dwight Reighard, president and CEO of MUST Ministries, a Marietta non-profit serving the needy.
MUST Ministries launched its Summer Lunch program in 1995. The 10-week effort, which began May 26, serves children in eight counties: Fulton, Gwinnett, Cobb, Cherokee and Bartow.
MUST is one of many agencies in metro Atlanta and the state trying to fill the gap. All of them need our help. If you can’t provide meals, maybe you have time to serve food or help deliver meals.
This year marks Action Ministries' fourth serving children through its Smart Lunch, Smart Kid program. Kids receive lunches and educational enrichment opportunities, too.
That program, which covers 16 counties and served more than 219,000 healthy lunches to Georgia children last year, gets underway June 1.
“There is still a tremendous need for this program because we know a child’s mind does not stop growing during the summer,” said John R. Moeller, Jr., president and CEO of Action Ministries. “Their access to healthy meals should not stop either.”
MUST serves nearly 7,000 children a day each summer. That amounts to 1.84 million lunches in 20 years.
Reighard expects they’ll hit the two million mark this year.
“The problem becomes more acute each year,” he said.
And each year, an army of volunteers deliver sack lunches to kids in apartment complexes, mobile home communities and parks. Wherever there is a need.
At each place, they say, it’s still hard to comprehend that without them, children will go hungry. And if you stay around long enough to witness children negotiate eating an entire sandwich or saving half for later or for their mother because she’ll be hungry, too, it’ll make you weep.
“The biggest issue right now is we need help,” Reighard said. “ We’re not trying to be a hammock for people. We’re a safety net.”
If you listen to talk radio, you have 10 reasons to tune out. The poor are lazy. They’d rather you feel sorry for them than pull themselves up by their bootstraps.
Reighard doesn’t affix blame.
“I just want to feed kids who didn’t ask to be in this situation,” he said.
That’s a responsibility we should all share.
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