The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) recently announced their 2024 Summer Meals for Kids these centers will be open until the end of August.
The locations for the congregate meals, which are healthy meals served in a group setting, will be at:Â Sterling House, Longbrook Park, Short Beach Playground, South End Community Center, Stratford Academy, Second Hill Lane.
As the top Democrat on the House Committee on Appropriations, I have continuously led the fight to fully fund food assistance programs such as food stamps and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) that ensure families are able to put food on the table and not go to bed hungry.
When I was Chair of the Appropriations Committee, I was proud to include $25.5 billion for investments in the health of America’s children, including funding for child nutrition and school meals. The law also ensured the more than 43 million people in SNAP-eligible families receive the benefits they needed, and it expanded access to fresh fruits and vegetables to 6.3 million people through Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), according to the USDA. The 2023 spending law also combatted food insecurity abroad with record funding levels of $1.75 billion for Food for Peace Title II grants and $243 million for the McGovern Dole International Food for Education and Child Nutrition Program. I fought to protect this critical funding in the 2024 government funding process and will be doing the same for 2025.
I can assure you that I will continue to work to ensure that federal food assistance programs stick around for generations to come to give healthy and nutritious meals to the kids of Connecticut. A recent estimate found that one in eight Connecticut residents are food insecure; that includes 112,000 children. No child should ever have to go to bed hungry, period, and these programs are a good first step at eliminating hunger in our community and across our country.
