Emergency Meals for Teens and Kids

By More Food

Emergency Meals for Teens & Kids

The North Carolina Shelter in Place order continues to grow stricter. With each day, we are made aware of additional changes that influence our new normal. The United States Department of Agriculture has granted waivers to allow states more flexibility to allow non-congregate feeding. Parents/guardians can now pick up meals for their child, without the child being present. This waiver is in effect through June 30TH, 2020 or at the conclusion of the federally declared public health emergency, whichever is earlier.

Please check out the availability of resources offered by the USDA:

  1. Online Mapping Tool to Find Feeding Sites

Parents with kids and teens 18 years and younger can use the Meals 4 Kids mapping tool to find sites near them where they can pick up free nutritious meals and snacks. To maintain social distancing, kids and teens may take their meal home to eat. Simply type in your address and find results.

Text ‘FOOD’ to 877-877 to find feeding sits for kids and teens. No Kid Hungry offers a national texting service that allows parents or students to find feeding sites near them by text.

  • Text ‘FOOD’ to 877-877 or ‘COMIDA’ to 877-877 for information in Spanish.
    • User receives a text back prompting them to enter a street address, city and state and/or zip code for their desired location. (The service is able to return results for inputs that include only city and state and/or zip code, including a full street address will return results that are more accurate.)
    • The service then texts back information about nearby meal sites, or information about how to access other food resources if no sites are operating in the vicinity.

Call 1-866-348-6479 (English 1-866-3-HUNGRY) of 1-877-8-436373 (Spanish-1-877-3-HAMBRE)-the USDA National Hunger Hotline, Monday-Friday, 7:00 am-10 pm EST for help locating local feeding sites, food banks, or food pantries.

  • Food Finder App

Find emergency food locations by using the FoodFinder online tool or mobile app.

For continued up to date information on how USDA is responding to COVID-19, please visit:

https://www.fns.usda.gov/disaster/pandemic/covid-19

Information for this blog accessed at:

https://www.fns.usda.gov/disaster/pandemic/covid-19