Summer Food Service Program

Last week we were honored to host USDA’s 3 rd annual Iftar commemorating the month of Ramadan and the contributions of USDA’s Muslim employees. More than 200 attendees, including USDA employees, Muslim community members, and representatives from faith-based and secular non-profit organizations...

Despite having some of the highest unemployment and home foreclosure rates in New Jersey, the city of Perth Amboy refuses to let kids go hungry over the summer. In 2011 the city extended the Summer Food Service Program by two weeks and added 20 new feeding sites. Through an aggressive marketing...

The “Food, Fun and Sun!” Contest is in full swing and submissions are rolling in to beat the submission deadline of August 20. The USDA Food and Nutrition Service launched the Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) Story and Photo contest as a way to collect promising practices of the SFSP around the...

A couple of weeks ago I joined two exciting events: the National Council of La Raza's (NCLR) Convention, here in our nation's capital, and the White House Connecting for the Common Good Conference in Denver. Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack led the NCLR Town Hall on nutrition and spoke of the...

In the U.S., Hispanic households experience hunger at rates that are higher than the national average. According to USDA research, one out of every four Hispanic households in the U.S. is food insecure, compared with a national average of 15 percent. Hispanics also participate in the Supplemental...

With summer in full swing, my colleagues and I had the opportunity to visit Summer Food Service sites in Indian Country. Our journey landed us first at a Bureau of Indian Education school in Eagle Butte, South Dakota on the Cheyenne River Sioux Tribe Reservation. Eagle Butte is about 170 miles...

Cross posted from the Let's Move! blog: Islamic Relief USA (IRUSA), a faith-based disaster relief and development organization, celebrated the inauguration of its Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) with a ribbon cutting on Thursday, July 21, at An Nur School in Lanham, Maryland. The ceremony also...

During my recent trip to Chicago, I had the great fortune to visit several places that were doing tremendous work with many of USDA’s nutrition programs. One of the first stops was to a local school where children were really excited to learn more about where their food comes from.

On July 6 th, I attended an event to kick-off this season’s Summer Food Service Program in Texas and to celebrate the state’s third annual “Mayor’s Challenge” to end child hunger during the summer. The event was held at NFL Hall of Famer Deion Sanders’ youth camp in Duncanville, Texas.

An African proverb holds that it takes a village to raise a child. And what’s a village? Well, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, it’s the Milwaukee Hunger Task Force (the State’s largest food bank and anti-hunger advocacy organization), Kohl’s Department Stores, Milwaukee Public Schools, the Salvation Army...