When school’s out, who will feed the kids? 

By Diana Lopez

Kelly Spivey has a reputation in Tarboro for being able to connect people with basic needs when they are struggling to fill their pantries and other parts of their homes.

She’s got a five-shelf locker outside her house that she has been stocking with food and toiletries for the past eight years, a project she calls Kelly’s Community Pantry. On her porch and around her property, she has clothes, books and other items that people have donated for her to pass along to others.

“I call myself a community connector,” Spivey told NC Health News in a recent interview, calling what she does “her passion work.”

The mother of four also has a full-time job as a community health improvement coordinator at ECU Health Edgecombe Hospital in Tarboro, work that helps her make the many connections that come in handy as she helps feed people in need.

The summertime can be especially challenging for many children living in food insecurity. Edgecombe County has one of the highest rates for child food insecurity in the state — 36.2 percent, according to Feeding America 2023 data.

“People don’t realize that,” Spivey said. “If you don’t see it, you don’t see it. That’s why I’m glad the food pantry is here because they can just come here, they can get some toys, they can get a book, and they can grab some food.”

Spivey calls the atmosphere relaxed. There are no questionnaires, surveys or forms to be completed. 

“It’s literally no questions asked,” Spivey said. “Just respect the space.”

About 1.5 million K-12 public school children in North Carolina started their summer breaks this month. The escape from rigid schedules and homework is something that most kids dream about throughout the school year. However, for 1 in 5 North Carolina children children and teenagers who have limited access to adequate, safe and nutritious food, summer vacation can be their hungriest time.

More than 850,000 North Carolina students rely on free or reduced-price school breakfast, lunch and after-school snack programs for nutritious meals throughout the year. However, the end of school starts a 10-week period when these students must find meals elsewhere. 

According to the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, 438,200 students younger than 18 are food insecure across the state, and more than 168,000 of those students reside in the bank’s 34-county service area. 

The Food Bank of the Albemarle, which serves northeastern N.C., reported that 1 in 4 children in its service area face food insecurity. 

Local pantries help

Luckily,community programs like Spivey’s try to make sure children — and the adults in their families — aren’t going hungry. 

The Edenton-Chowan Food Pantry in Edenton, about 70 miles from Spivey’s Community Pantry, regularly distributes food on Mondays and Fridays and has a Commodity Supplemental Food Program for people 60 and older. From early June to mid-August, the pantry also offers the Children’s Summer Nutrition Program for families with a child in the Edenton-Chowan Public Schools. On Wednesday evenings, any school-age child who lives in Chowan County is given a meal of either chicken, hot dogs or hamburgers and is sent home with about 20 food items for the weekend, according to Jo Brown, programs manager for the Edenton-Chowan Food Pantry. 

Brown said that during their summer nutrition programs, they serve a range of 65 to 90 families a week, and sometimes more. “Last year, from June to August, we had 874 families and 1,775 children we paid food out to,” she said. 

The Edenton-Chowan pantry also has a mobile program that goes out on the second and third weekends of each month for people facing transportation barriers.

Feed Your Neighbor Community Food Pantry in Greenville doesn’t have a bus, but it does provide gas cards for families who might have transportation challenges because of the recent price increases at the pump. 

“Thankfully we’re able to get gas cards through some of our rewards with our business account that if somebody is needing gas, we can supply that,” said Whykeshia White, executive director of Feed Your Neighbor. “But the cost of gas and transportation-wise, it is hard on our pantry because we have to go to the food bank and we have to also purchase groceries weekly to make sure we have enough food for our neighbors.”

Traditional programs

While local pantries are doing their best to feed their communities, other governmental and non-governmental programs try to help as well. 

Greenville-based ECU Health announced on June 1 that its Summer Youth Meal Program is expanding, adding three new communities to its list this summer. The program, which used to only serve summer meals to children in Greenville, Bethel, Ahoskie and Tarboro, is extending its offerings to Edenton, Roanoke Rapids and Windsor. 

Tanya Bullock, the administrative assistant for ECU’s Community Health team, said the program’s ultimate goal is to expand to have a site in each of the nine counties that ECU Health Medical Center serves, so they have been working to gain enough support to fund the expansion. 

They’ve partnered with Food Lion Feeds, the grocer’s charity initiative to address food insecurity. That’s given ECU Health the money to spread their meals across three more counties. The health care system also is partnering with Sodexo, a food services and facilities management group, and the ECU Health Foundation, a philanthropic arm for the nonprofit system that servies 29 counties in eastern North Carolina. 

The SUN Bucks food assistance program, funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, provides qualifying families with a one-time payment of $120 for each child to help them buy groceries during the summer months. The state Department of Health and Human Services administers the federal program. 

Most children who have been approved for reduced or free school lunch should already be enrolled in the program, according to DHHS. The benefits card can be used in grocery stores, farmers markets and some online retailers. 

Additionally, the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction administers Summer Nutrition Programs, which provide on-site meals at some schools and community centers where children can eat with other kids and teens. The program also offers free SUN Meals To-Go in some rural areas that can be picked up or delivered.

Turbulent time

Many food assistance programs have seen a sharp rollback of federal funding and aid over the past year. 

President Donald Trump signed the One Big Beautiful Bill Act almost a year ago, giving his OK to a federal budget that restructured the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP. The changes include new, stricter work requirements and cutting more than $186 billion in federal funding over the next decade. 

The federal changes shifted more financial and administrative responsibility to states; in North Carolina, social services are provided by the state’s 100 counties, thus adding more pressure to county governments, many of which operate on tight budgets already.

On June 18, state Sens. Jay Chaudhuri (D-Raleigh) and Jim Burgin (R-Angier) wrote to U.S. Senate members asking them to delay implementation of the new cost-sharing requirements for SNAP signed into law last year by Trump.

Leaders from prominent hunger-relief organizations in North Carolina also signed onto the letter sent to the U.S. Senate Agriculture Committee and the Senate Appropriations Subcommittee on Agriculture, Rural Development, Food and Drug Administration, and Related Agencies. They asked for postponement of the new cost-sharing rules until 2030, citing concerns about penalties that could be imposed on North Carolina because of what they say was flawed quality control data that fails to accurately reflect error rates. That could lead to North Carolina having to cover an additional $420 million per year for food assistance, in addition to the administrative costs the federal government is shifting to the states, according to the letter.

“North Carolina is doing the work,” Chaudhuri said in a prepared statement. “We’ve already cut our payment error rate significantly. Penalizing the state now, based on unclear guidance and flawed data from a period of federal chaos, would undermine that progress and put food assistance at risk for more than a million North Carolinians.” 

On June 12, state Attorney General Jeff Jackson joined other Democratic attorneys general calling on Congress to restore SNAP benefits and eligibility protections in the Farm Bill this year. In a letter to U.S. Senate leaders, the attorneys general urged the body to “reject efforts to perpetuate or expand the harmful cuts enacted last year in H.R. 1 and perpetuated by the House version of the Farm Bill.”

“Those cuts — the largest reductions to food assistance in modern history — are forcing families to skip meals, creating new barriers to assistance for working people and seniors, and shifting billions of dollars in costs onto states and local governments,” the letter states. “As the Senate considers the Farm Bill passed by the House, it has an opportunity to reverse course and reaffirm a bipartisan commitment that no American should go hungry because they cannot afford food.”

Local pantries have seen the effects of these cuts. 

The Edenton-Chowan Pantry has seen a lot more people at their Monday and Friday program, according to Brown, the program manager. She attributes a lot of that increase to the federal cuts.

White, the executive director at Feed Your Neighbor Community Food Pantry in Greenville, says more people are aware of her site now.

“A lot of people look towards pantries,” she said. “A lot of our neighbors, they never heard of us or they just heard of us and they needed assistance.”

A full-circle moment

Spivey saw what she described as “a huge influx” at her pantry last year after some of the SNAP cuts took effect. “People were desperate, uncertain about what was ahead,” she said.

One hopeful thing that Spivey has seen since starting her pantry, however, is people in the community stepping up to help fill in gaps when there’s a need.

Spivey recounted a story about a family she met at one of the summer meal programs last year. Not too long ago, she got a call from someone with financial means who wanted to help a family.

So “the connector” connected the caller with a single mom with six children who had just gotten a home after being homeless. They needed a stove and refrigerator, and the caller was happy to provide them with the appliances. 

“Full circle moment, that family was with me at the free summer meals program last year, like every day — for one, to stay in the air condition, get a meal, and mom could take care of business in the air conditioning and all that stuff,” Spivey said. “This year, they have a house, she has a job, they’re doing well.”

“When she gets extra, she comes and delivers things to the pantry,” Spivey added.

It’s that sense of community that helps keep the pantry and other food assistance programs going. 

“I just remind people, if we all just do a little, it can accomplish a lot,” Spivey said. “I’ve been seeing those little bits and pieces here and there that bring it together enough to make magic.”

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