For the second year, Olive Branch Baptist Church on East Juniper Avenue and St. John’s Episcopal Church on Durham Road have joined to provide hot dinners to local children, with a healthy dose of help from many individuals, churches, nonprofits and local clubs.
The Regional Center on East Holding Avenue is providing lunches to children up through 18 Tuesdays and Thursdays from June 19 through August 2. There are food programs this summer in several Wake County schools and other sites but none in the Wake Forest area.
The Summer Nutrition Program at Olive Branch is sponsored by the Food Bank of Central North Carolina and the USDA and runs for 10 weeks, June 14 through August 17.
Several local nonprofits and churches support the program by providing volunteers who support one night for each of the 10 weeks of the program, which runs June 14 through August 17.
Salina Gary, one of the site supervisors from the Wake Forest Woman’s Club, which is responsible for the Friday dinner, said, “On Monday, Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, a hot meal is served to any child, up to age of 18, between 5:30 and 6:30 p.m. at Olive Branch Baptist Church. The food vendor providing the meals this year is The Forks Cafeteria.
“Wednesday nights a family meal is served, hosted by one of the volunteer organizations, using Wake Forest Baptist Church’s food truck at Olive Branch. The groups purchase and prepare the meals, and Wake Forest Baptist Church also provides bags of fresh vegetables from their community garden for families to take home. This past Wednesday, they served 100 meals (and ran out of food and water). Next Wednesday they will plan on serving about 120.
“In addition to Olive Branch, St. John’s, and Wake Forest Baptist, Wake Forest United Methodist Church and Friendship Chapel Baptist Church members also volunteer. The non-profits, include the Lions Club of Wake Forest, the Wake Forest Rotary, the Optimist Club, the “Kiwanis Club and the Wake Forest Woman’s Club.
Each organization is required to have a trained and designated site supervisor who is required to be present each time their organization serves, to oversee food handling and serving, complete meal count information, clean up, and coordinate recreation activities for the kids.”
Joy Shillingsburg is again the coordinator for the entire effort, but has just had surgery and is recovering.
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The lunches at the Northern Regional Center are served on Tuesdays and Thursdays from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. as part of Wake County’s Summer Food Service Program.
Nearly 56,000 youth in Wake County are eligible for free or reduced-price meals at school, according to county data. The federally funded Summer Food Service Program helps fill a need during the summer when traditional-calendar schools are on break.
Families do not have to apply or show proof of income to take part in the program.
For more information, call 919-562-6384.
