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Summer Kids Meals – a Ministry in Castle Rock, Washington
It began with a generous endowment left to St. Paul Lutheran by a long-term member. The purpose of the endowment was to serve kids and the elderly in the community. An educator and a restaurant owner had a vision to serve summer hot lunches to kids in Castle Rock Monday – Friday during the summer months. St. Paul organized and hosted what has become the Summer Kids Meal program and has just completed its 24th year of service.
This nine-week program operates out of St. Paul’s commercial kitchen, located in downtown Castle Rock. In addition to St. Paul, the following congregations participated in providing and serving lunches: Castle Rock Christian, Apostolic Lutheran, St. Mary’s Catholic, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Castle Rock First Baptist and Castle Rock Methodist. Each church volunteers for one or two weeks in this program that starts the day after school dismisses for the summer and ends the last week day of August. The doors are open from noon-12:30. The majority of the meals are distributed in the first 15 minutes.
Each church leader plans and purchases food for their given week. St. Paul supplies the lunch sacks, portion cups, Ziploc bags, and sandwich clam shells. Dairy Fresh Farms delivers both white and chocolate milk each week.
All meals are handed out as sack lunches. The kids can eat in the fellowship hall, or take the meals with them. This meal program ran through COVID, and the kids picked up the sack lunches from the back door of the kitchen.
In addition to the leaders, it takes a handful of volunteers working every day to make these lunches happen. They are rewarded with smiles and gratitude from the kids as well as statements like: “I can only drink chocolate milk, I’m allergic to white milk.” One year, an 8-year-old asked if he could take a sack lunch home to his Mom, who just had a baby. Of course you can. In the three years I have been volunteering, I am seeing some of the same faces each summer, and am blessed to be part of this ministry.
In 2023, St. Paul expenses were: $500 janitorial, $640 milk, and $2,700.00 food. All the expenses came from the endowment fund as well as community donations of $1000. The program served 2,408 lunches to children and some parents in the community.
All meals are handed out as sack lunches. The kids can eat in the fellowship hall, or take the meals with them. This meal program ran through COVID, and the kids picked up the sack lunches from the back door of the kitchen.
St. Paul distributes fliers about the program to all the schools at the end of the school year. In addition, there are sandwich board signs placed on the corners directing people to the church. We feed all who come in without questions.
This year, we provided an average of 80 meals a day….
Submitted by: Mary Rosen, St. Paul Lutheran Church, Castle Rock, WA
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