Nearly 300,000 income-eligible students across Oregon could have access to a new federal summer meal program starting this upcoming summer school break.
The Summer Electronic Benefit Transfer Program for Children, or summer EBT, a U.S. Department of Agriculture initiative, will work similar to SNAP, informally known as food stamps.
It will provide income-eligible families — including immigrant or undocumented families — with $40 per month per child, for three months when they’re not receiving free meals at school.
State officials had signed on to participate in the federal program last year, though it hinged on a legislative approval of $12.7 million to cover half of the annual administrative costs. With the Legislature having approved the funds during the recent session, the program can move forward. The federal government will pay for all food benefits and the other half of administrative costs. The program’s cost is estimated at over $80 million over the next two years.
The program comes at a time when Oregon is seeing high demand for emergency food linked to high prices at the grocery store, along with the expiration of several pandemic-era assistance programs, said Matt Newell-Ching, the public policy manager at the Oregon Food Bank.
“At Oregon Food Bank, I mean, we saw 1.9 million visits to our sites in our network over the past year, and that matches the levels that we saw at the peak of the pandemic,” Newell-Ching said.
Officials say pilot phases of the program have been shown to reduce child hunger, with participating families experiencing a 33% decrease in child hunger during the summer months.
Charlie Krouse, a community organizer for the nonprofit Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon, said the program provides a financial boost to low-income families during a time of the year when a child is most likely to be food insecure.
They also said there’s a huge need for the program, especially in rural communities where kids may not be close to a summer meal site or might lack reliable transportation.
“In rural areas, it’s really hard to access food shelters or food banks,” Krouse said. “And so this directly kind of cuts out those key issues and allows students to directly have access to nourishing foods throughout the summer in their local hometowns and in their local stores.”
Families with children already participating in SNAP, Medicaid or TANF will be enrolled automatically — meaning parents or guardians do not have to do anything to receive the extra dollars — while some families will have to apply through the Oregon Department of Human Services. Other programs like the Oregon Summer Food Service Program will continue to be available for children wanting to go to a community site to grab a meal.
Summer EBT is tentatively scheduled to launch this June, according to a press release from the food bank.
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