Food 4 Kids Feeding Hundreds Of Lower Cape Children Daily

ORLEANS – Mornings are busy at the Church of the Holy Spirit. Monday through Friday, volunteers arrive in staggered shifts to begin packing lunches for kids of the Lower and Outer Cape. 

The Food 4 Kids program, based out of the church, targets food insecurity on Cape Cod during the summer months by providing free meals to children at 19 different sites from Harwich to Provincetown. 

Jenn Gale, the program’s executive director, oversees a large project in coordinating meal preparation, delivery and outreach, especially as demand only continues to grow. 

“The operation here went from four to six sites to 18 to 22,” she said. 

When Food 4 Kids started in 2013, it was not the network of service it is today. It was founded by Ruth Campbell, who had run a similar operation in Springfield and had retired to Cape Cod. It came as a shock that a significant percentage of students and families on the Lower Cape qualified as low income. 

“In some towns, it’s as high as 46 percent,” Gale said. “A lot of people retire here and they have no idea.”

Cape Cod’s outwardly facing tourist appeal can hide the experiences of local families, who represent a diversity of backgrounds, heritages and economic conditions. When schools close for the summer and tourists flood the beaches, many are unaware of local kids being left behind. 

Food 4 Kids works to close this gap, but doing so is a massive effort, most of which is undertaken by volunteers. The first wave arrive at the Church of the Holy Spirit at 7:30 a.m. in order to prepare the day’s meals. At 9:30, volunteers pack the meals in an assembly line, filling 30 to 40 coolers full of ready-made meals. More volunteers will arrive after that to deliver the lunches to the meal sites. 

“Our volunteers are amazing,” Gale said. “They show up when we need them to.”

Such a program is made possible by the generosity of the volunteers lending their time, as well as partners willing to chip in to fund the work. The program is funded in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, based on a fixed reimbursement for each meal a child receives. Since that only covers about half of the program’s budget, additional funding must be acquired elsewhere. 

“Since coming on board, I’ve done a lot of fundraising,” Gale said. 

Gale and the volunteers organized a Walk for Hunger in order to raise funds for the program. The towns involved with Food 4 Kids provide some funding, as well as the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education and Episcopal Diocese of Massachusetts. Local businesses like The Knack partner with the group, donating a portion of dessert sales. 

Such funding is crucial, as food costs on Cape Cod are 29 percent higher than the national average, according to the group’s website. Due to the success of the program, Food 4 Kids is outgrowing its space in the Church of the Holy Spirit. Last summer, nearly 57,000 meals were served, which was a 10,000 meal increase from the summer prior. In order to keep up with demand, the group is hoping to partner with St. Christopher’s Episcopal Church in Chatham. This partnership is still in the works, and could possibly begin in earnest next summer. It would be a greatly needed ease of the work the staff currently takes on to make sure the kids of the Lower Cape are fed. 

“It takes a lot of local families to make this community work,” Gale said.