Food Bank Expands Summer Bag Program

TYLER – The East Texas Food Bank will expand its Summer Bag Program thanks to a $20,000 Hunger-Free Summer grant awarded by Feeding America thanks to a donation from the ConAgra Foods Foundation. Officials say the grant will allow the Food Bank to provide bags of nutritious food over the weekend at ten rural Summer Food Service Program sites. The bags of food will be given out on Fridays to those children who participate in the Summer Food Service Program during the week but are at risk of hunger on the weekends.

According to a Food Bank news release, the grant was awarded to support the Food Bank’s efforts in alleviating hunger for East Texas children in the summer months when school is not in session. Officials say the ten sites were chosen due to the high level of need in the communities where they operate – underserved, rural communities where there is a high concentration of child poverty, but a low number of feeding agencies and child hunger programs.

The ten sites are Boys and Girls Club of Rusk County, Our Lady of Sorrows Catholic Church, Sweet Union Apartment Complex, Oakgrove Baptist Church, First Presbyterian Church of Mt. Pleasant, Marion County Community Center, Addie McFarland Community Center, Hawkins Community Center, Earnest J. Woods Intermediate School, and Grapeland Elementary School.