2007 Summer Meals News

Date: 10/02/07

[The following is an excerpt from an article written by David Berkowitz, Executive Director of the N.Y.C. Department of Education's School Food Services, and is used by permission.]

Our 2007 Summer Meals program achieved tremendous success, increasing participation over all compared to last year. We are very pleased that the Heckscher Foundation continued to support SchoolFood's efforts to grow the summer program. Preliminary data shows we served a total of 2,230,497 breakfasts, which was 189,868 more than 2006, and we served up 4,681,654 lunches, which increased from last year by 230,112. This was a nine percent increase for breakfast and a five percent increase for lunch.

In addition we made significant progress in engaging and sustaining key partnerships with recognized health associations, local community groups and government agencies.

A part of the large increase in participation this summer can be attributed to a new partnership with the New York City Housing Authority (NYCHA). This summer was the first time SchoolFood provided meal service to over 70 NYCHA locations in all five boroughs. We are very pleased with the results of this new partnership and look forward to even more locations opening next year. In addition, the collaboration with the New York City Parks Department continued to be a strong positive influence for the summer meals program. The increase seen in the pools this year were very impressive, building on the 30% increase we achieved last year. The children enjoyed a refreshing swim on a hot and humid day as well as a delicious, healthy SchoolFood lunch.

We also expanded the program's marketing and outreach - particularly to immigrant groups. For the first time we worked with the Brooklyn and Queens Public Library as we successfully implemented a pilot program to serve summer meals throughout most of the summer at eight library locations. As a result of this collaboration, we served over 4,000 additional meals. We would like to see even more libraries served next year throughout the city. This is certainly an excellent venue to reach more children and assist in their learning experience.

Marketing the summer program was accomplished through outreach posters and matching flyers translated into eight languages. These were then widely distributed throughout the city to individuals, city agencies; community based organizations, and hung in public spaces. Particular attention was paid to communities with large percentages of non-English speaking immigrants. This summer for the first time we ran paid radio advertisements during peak broadcast times and on a wide variety of stations getting the message out to our community about free summer meals.

These programmatic and strategic improvements helped to increase knowledge, awareness and participation in the 2007 Summer Meals program. These initiatives are moving us closer toward our goal of reaching our potential for the Summer Meals program.

External Link: SchoolFood Website