On a foggy morning in Bland County, near the West Virginia line, kids and their parents, and some grandparents, were parked outside a food pantry. They were there to collect boxes of food, with 10 meals per child, with food like applesauce, chicken salad, cereal and milk.
"I’ve had really good comments about the kids really enjoying this food," said Howard Chafin, who was handing out food through a summer meal program through Feeding Southwest Virginia.
His group has been able to feed a lot more kids than they could in the past. “I expected this to explode, and boy it exceeded expectations,” Chafin said. Feeding Southwest Virginia served almost 10 times as many meals to kids in far southwest Virginia this June, compared with last year.
This is due, at least in part, to a policy change the USDA made last December. Similar to how schools passed out multiple days’ worth of food during the pandemic, kids in rural areas are now able to get a whole weeks’ worth of meals at a time, and they don’t have to eat them on site, so more organizations are now able to participate.
Because of the distances families often have to drive, children who live in rural communities have more barriers to accessing free meals during the summer, said Sarah Steely, director of No Kid Hungry Virginia, a program through the non-profit Share Our Strength.
“They would drive 45 minutes to drive over the mountain to sit and eat for five minutes, to drive for 45 minutes home," Steely said. "That doesn’t make sense as far as time in the day, in terms of the money it would cost to put gas in your car."
Only the most rural, and remote, areas are eligible for the new non-congregate flexibility for summer meal programs. Steely and her organization is asking the USDA to reconsider its guidelines, to allow more school divisions to feed more kids next summer.
For example, Pulaski County is not eligible, because of its proximity to more populated areas like Blacksburg and Roanoke.
The USDA is expected to issue its final version on the non-congregate flexibility rule by the end of this year.
