January 31, 2019

Don’t let literacy and healthy eating take a summer vacation! California Library Association announces grant funding available to support the enhancement and expansion of California’s 2019 library-based summer meal partnerships and programs. USDA’s summer meals program enables communities and partners to provide free breakfast, lunch and snacks to all children ages 1-18 when school is out over the summer. Lunch at the Library programs offer a successful model to enhance childhood literacy and nutrition over the summer months. 

Funds are available to:

• Provide seed money to support libraries serving summer meals for the first time,
• Support expansion of the number of summer meal sites in your library jurisdiction,
• Support pop-up library programming at nearby non-library community summer meal sites (a great opportunity for libraries that want to support summer meal programs but cannot, or prefer not to, serve meals at a library location),
• Enhance existing summer meal site(s) with self-directed and facilitated programming,
• Support a youth development/teen volunteer component to an existing summer meal program,
• Support early childhood nutrition education as a component to an existing summer meal program. 

To apply for these funds:

1. Complete the notification-of-interest survey, one per library jurisdiction, by Friday, February 15th, 2019.

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/2019LunchattheLibraryInterest

2. In the linked survey, indicate the desired type of funds:

• Seed funds for a library jurisdiction starting a summer meal program for the first time in 2019 ($5,000)
• Seed funds for library jurisdictions already serving summer meals seeking to open additional summer meal sites in order to expand the number of branches serving summer meals. ($2,000 per new site)
• Pop-up library programming funds to support library jurisdictions enhancing local non-library community meal sites with pop-up library programming. ($1,000-$2,000* per site)
• Programming funds for existing summer meal sites seeking to enhance their program(s). Programming funds may be used for program facilitation, program supplies to support self-directed and/or facilitated programming, and for additional high-priority summer meal needs ($1,000-$2,000* per site). Self-directed or facilitated programming are activities such as:
  • art-making & building; cooking & nutrition education; early childhood & family literacy; music & theater; science, technology, engineering & math; sports, physical activities & games; summer reading activities; youth development activities
• Youth Development Funds to support a youth development/teen volunteer component to an existing summer meal program,
• Early Childhood Nutrition Education Funds to support early childhood nutrition education as a component of an existing summer meal programs. 

*We are unable to confirm exact funding amounts until all requests for program expansion funds, program enhancement funds, and pop-up library programming funds have been received.

Some counties may still be working on summer meal planning for summer 2019. Even if site-plans are tentative, or a plan to partner with a community meal site is tentative, please include this information on the form and simply make a note of the tentative nature of the planning. Lunch at the Library funds will be divided and distributed to maximize the benefit to as many library communities as possible, statewide.

In addition to funding, Lunch at the Library provide evaluation tools to help demonstrate the impact of summer programming.

For more information about the grant funding click here. For information about serving summer meals in California’s libraries, programming ideas, and for a host of resources and evaluation tools please visit LunchattheLibrary.org