Our ongoing partnership with Food Lifeline has been very rewarding to our team. We continue to be inspired by the staff and volunteers at Food Lifeline that work day in and out to find new ways to feed hungry families. And this year, thanks to the wonderful staff at Food Lifeline, we got a look into the newly expanded Kid’s Café Program. This summer program brings meals to children who normally rely on the free or reduced lunch programs in Western Washington schools. With the help of many volunteers and staff, along with and fundraising efforts like Food Frenzy, kids from 1 to 18 are able to fuel their summer fun at 18 sites across Western Washington! The growth of the program is allowing more and more children to be served healthy meals every day. This June, the program served 12,298 meals and snacks over the first two weeks of operation. That is almost as many meals in two weeks as they served all of last summer – nearly 1,230 meals every single day! That’s exciting stuff, folks!

“Last week I went out to a Kids Cafe site. It was a Friday and after the kids were done eating and getting ready to go home, Sarah the site supervisor put out all of the fresh fruits and vegetables that would otherwise go to waste over the weekend and let the children know that they could take as much home as they wanted to eat over the weekend. I watched as almost a dozen children ranging from 5 to 13 years old ran to the fresh produce and began to fill the plastic shopping bags with food. One little boy came up to me and very excitedly told me how much he loves apples. It’s been a very rewarding experience to see first-hand how our Kids Cafe program is benefiting children throughout Western Washington.”

– Stephanie, Food Lifeline Kids Cafe Coordinator

If you want to learn more about the Kid’s Café program, here’s a wonderful cartoon that illustrates how the program works.

Meantime, you can help out this great program! This year, as part of the Food Frenzy fundraising competition, our Seattle smarties decided to mix things up (quite literally) and have a bake sale (July 13 and 14) as part of the fundraiser. If you happen to be in the Seattle area, specifically Pioneer Square, you can stop by, say hello and get a sweet treat courtesy of our in-house bakers and The Seattle Cookie Lady. And, if you’re not in Seattle, you can still support Food Lifeline. Check out our crowdrise page to donate for a virtual treat.