Kids and teens have access to free meals in the summer months
During the summer, thousands of meals are served to kids through the Meet Up and Eat Up Program to help ensure their hunger doesn’t begin when the school year ends.
Meet Up and Eat Up provides nutritious meals to children 18 years of age and younger in low-income areas during the summer. The program ensures that children have access to nutritious meals during their school vacations when free and reduced-price meals are not available. Meet Up and Eat Up encompasses the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) and BackPack for Kids.
Find a Summer Meal Site at NVSummerMeals.com
During the school year, nearly 70% of Clark County School District students are eligible to receive free or reduced-price meals, which equates to more than 226,000 students. Every summer when school ends, thousands of kids are at risk of going hungry in Southern Nevada. Funded in part by the U.S. Department of Agriculture and administered by Nevada’s Department of Agriculture, Meet Up and Eat Up bridges the gap, ensuring that children do not go hungry over the summer and will return to school energetic and ready to learn.
Meet Up and Eat Up is offered at more than 100 locations across the valley. Locations include parks and recreation centers, Boys and Girls Clubs, libraries, day camps and apartment complexes. The menu includes 20 rotating meal options. Sites may offer breakfast, lunch or both.
Thanks to a partnership with Share our Strength, Three Square launched its first mobile meal distribution. Using refrigerated vans, Three Square is able to provide meals at 21 apartment complexes on three routes reaching more than 1,000 additional kids per day.
With the help of volunteers and partners, Three Square will pack more than 35,000 summer meals between Monday and Friday each week during the summer.
Importance of childhood nutrition
Inadequate nutrition in childhood has been shown to have a debilitating effect on a child’s cognitive function, often leading to underperformance in school and lower academic achievement.
Children who grow up in families below 185% of the federal poverty level, and who live in hungry and/or food insecure homes, suffer from two to four times as many health problems as their counterparts who do not experience hunger.
Children between the ages of five and seven living in food-insecure households have nearly three times the odds of stunted growth.
This institution is an equal opportunity provider. For more information, please contact Three Square at 702 644-3663 or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it..