Each meal was made fresh, from scratch and used 1,013 lbs of local fruits and veggies purchased directly from local farmers. All of this was possible because of the incredible work of our partners at Feeding KY, who run the Ky Kids Eat program, providing cost sharing incentives for Summer Food Service Providers to purchase straight from KY farmers and provide more nutritious whole foods to children who are living in areas that experience food insecurity. This allowed us to also prioritize local proteins such as pastured, farm raised eggs, chicken, sausage, and ground beef. Our total farm impact dollars for the summer was $1,994.85. That means we spent $1.68 per meal on local produce and protein, while each meal contained over a pound of local produce (before trimming, cleaning and cooking of course!).

Additionally, for this program, FoodChain was able to employ four graduates from our food sector job training program for a total of 408 hours during which they freshly prepared each day’s meal. Many of the graduates’ children were also attending and helped with some of the prep and then hanging out to cook for themselves in our Summer Cook.Eat.Grow. Program!

This summer gave us so much opportunity to partner with community organizations, both by providing meals to summer camps like Community Inspired Solutions and the West End Community Empowerment Project and by working with other educational non-profits to provide enrichment activities during the hours of food service! We partnered with Seedleaf, Sisohpromatem Art Foundation, Black Soil: Our Better Nature, the Carnegie Center, the International Book Project, and FoodChain’s own summer internship program.

We are looking to expand our programming for 2020, with traveling snacks and more summer program partners! If you are interested in learning more about how this program works, how you can be a part of healthy, hearty, whole foods for children while they are out of school, please contact leandra@foodchainlex.org.