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Volunteers, partnerships work to feed children in Hall County this summer
0623Kickoff5
Fair Street School students eat lunch Thursday morning inside the school cafeteria as the Summer Food Service Program begins its season of feeding free breakfast and lunch five days a week to children ages 2-18. The Summer Food Service Program is sponsored by the University of North Georgia, which has 19 sites in four counties, including Hall. Officials expect to serve 40,000-45,000 meals this summer.
Growing up in the Chestatee community, Alisha Chavez was one of many students who benefited from the reduced-fare lunch program at school, but she didn’t know about programs that offered free meals to students in the summer. Now a human services major at the University of North Georgia, Chavez volunteers in a program that hopes to provide more than 40,000 free meals for children at 19 sites this summer in Hall and three other counties. “(Hunger) has always been a problem that I’ve seen, but I’m glad that there’s actually a program to help with this and that I get to be a part of it,” Chavez said. “It’s actually a little fun, too, because I get to see where my skills are and I get to work directly with the kids.”