BOSTON — School’s out for the year.
Unemployment is at a record high and food pantries are straining under the weight of feeding families.
“Food insecurity in Massachusetts has risen to 38-percent. Normally we’re just over 9-percent,” says Elise Springuel, Program Manager at FoodLink. "So, that’s a very large increase. And we’re trying to figure out how folks will access food when they haven’t had to necessarily do it through the emergency food system.”
The state’s receiving 200-million dollars in federal aid to expand the National School Lunch Program for participating families.
Since the beginning of the coronavirus crisis, the weekly average number of SNAP applications received has increased by nearly 400%.
The benefit is for families in the national school lunch program, where families will receive pandemic-EBT or P-EBT and payments will equal to $5.70 per student per day.
“We did about 600,000 pounds of food a year, which we know is nowhere near what the need is going to be,” says Springuel. “We’re looking at new places in our system to be getting food. So as this continues to develop, we’re going to all need more food.”
Violence in Boston’s Monica Cannon Grant and chef Donnell Singleton have been providing free lunch and dinner for families since schools were closed statewide and care packages.
It’s an all volunteer effort and they rely entirely on donations. They are among the advocates that $5.70 is not enough to address this crisis.
”It costs us $3,500 a day to do lunch and dinner and we’re not even servicing the entire city," says Cannon Grant. “We’re servicing Dorchester, Roxbury, Mattapan and Hyde Park.”
Governor Baker’s office is partnering with Project Bread and the Shah Family Foundation to share information. You can also go to Mass.gov/p-ebt.
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RESOURCES:
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