This past Wednesday, The Boys & Girls Club at Apopka’s John Bridges Center became the latest addition to our Kids Cafe Program.
The site is expected to serve approximately 100 meals per day to children enrolled at the Boys & Girls Club and the New Journey Youth Center.
The Kids Cafe After School Meal Program operates throughout the school year, providing nutritious, five-component meals to children 18 or under at eligible centers in low income, at-risk communities.
The John Bridges Center is owned and operated by Orange County Government and offers services to residents in the greater Apopka area by partnering with over 19 community groups including Seniors First, Boys and Girls Club, Orange County’s Health and Families Services, UCF’s Community Nursing Center, and Head Start.
The new childhood feeding program was made possible by the collaborative efforts of Boys & Girls Club of Central Florida, Orange County’s Community Action Division, The Department of Health’s Bureau of Child Nutrition, and Second Harvest Food Bank.
Outreach efforts are underway to attract more children from the surrounding community.
Eddie Brown, Program Manager for the Community Action Division wrote, “It is this type of partnership that allow us to expand our resources and services to a wider area of the communities we serve. “
In the last three years, our Kids Cafes have served over 620,000 meals to approximately 1,330 children daily at 15 locations in 3 counties.
In Florida, over one million children live in households that are food insecure. To learn more about childhood hunger and food insecurity, follow this link: Hunger In America
To see the location of our Kids Cafes, follow this link: SHFB Kids Cafes 2014
Santos Maldonado
Childhood Hunger Programs Manager