They say there is no such thing as a free lunch. But a free hot lunch and breakfast is exactly what any child can get at the Ely Chapman Education Center starting this week and throughout the summer.
Of course the Chapman Center, taxpayers and donors pick up the tab, so the program is not completely without cost, but offering the meals to any child age 1 through 18 for free during the summer is an important asset to the community, said Chapman Center Food Director Jim Couts.
The summer breakfast and lunch program aims to help lower income children, but any child can eat a free meal. Breakfast is served from 8 to 9 a.m. Monday through Friday followed by lunch from noon to 2 p.m. The children eat in the dining room at the Chapman Center on Scammel Street. Starting next week, the program will also simultaneously deliver lunches to the Washington School, Flanders, and South Sixth Street playgrounds and the Salvation Army’s Boys and Girls Club.
Couts says the summer breakfast and lunch program “rounds out and completes the puzzle” of the Marietta student hot meals move started in 1999.
“Three years ago, students at Marietta schools were eating out of vending machines,” Couts said. Couts chaired a school nutrition task force which raised about $100,000 from the community, $200,000 from the Children Hunger Alliance and money from the government to bring hot lunches to Marietta High School. The program also included free or reduced lunches reimbursed by the government for lower income students. Within the past two years, the program’s success has spread, providing hot meals to the middle school and every Marietta elementary school.
But when school lets out for the summer, Marietta’s children are out running around and still working up an appetite. The summer vacation for children can turn into a summer nightmare for working single parents, Couts said.
U.S. Census information furthers the need for assistance by identifying six areas in Marietta that are at 50 percent or below the poverty level, Couts said. Those numbers qualify the Marietta school district to offer summer meals through government subsidies, but because the school passed up the opportunity, a not-for-profit organization like the Ely Chapman Center can receive the meal program subsidies.
“Nutritious food is now available year-round and that was the goal,” Couts said. Through the Ohio Department of Education and the United States Agriculture Department (USDA), the Chapman Center receives $1.32 for each breakfast served and $2.30 for each lunch. Couts said the total cost is much higher and the Ely Chapman Foundation funds the rest, with additional help from volunteers and staff.
Marietta parent Dawn Sarringhausen said the summer meals program “has been a godsend” for her two children and two nieces that she is taking care of during the summer.
“I was wondering how I was going to have to spread out the dollars for food,” Sarringhausen said. She says her kids “like it better than McDonald’s” and she enjoys the family type restaurant setting of the dining room, complete with marine theme tablecloths and decorative secondhand chairs from a closed-out Chinese restaurant in Sistersville, W.Va.
“We’re calling it the Living Rivers Cafe,” Couts said wearing a captain’s cap to emphasize the theme.
Students Quincy Meadows, 8, Kirk Slider, 8, and Cameron Rice, 7, get a kick out of Couts’ cap, snickering while they eat their lunch of pretzel shaped chicken nuggets, green beans, pears, a Rice Krispie treat and milk. Probably making mom proud, Rice was actually the only one to eat the green beans, even clearing the veggies from the plates of Meadows and Slider.
“It’s good food,” the three boys said. They said the meals topped the food at school and the tastiest food so far has been the spaghetti served earlier in the week.
Gwen Crum brought the three boys to lunch as part of a summer outreach camp for children at Marietta College.
“This gives us a chance to feed them before they go home ... and a nice chance to work with their table manners and behaviors,” Crum said.
Couts said the first week of the program served about 50 to 70 children a day and he expects 200 a day by the end of the summer.
To handle the children, the program has a staff of two (including Couts) from the Chapman Center, six assistants from Washington-Morgan County Community Action and four additional full-time personnel.
Deanna Weaver, 23, is one of those four, working with Americorp and the Children’s Hunger Alliance.
“We start working at 7 a.m. to make breakfast and right after we start preparing lunch,” Weaver said.
Weaver, a 2001 Marietta College graduate, wants to eventually go to medical school, but for the past year has been working throughout the Marietta school district with children in a literacy and nutrition program.
As Rice comes up to give Weaver his tray, he proudly tells her about how he finished his entire meal.
“Good,” Weaver replies with a smile. “That’s what I like to see, a happy clean plate.”