Food for Lane County expands free summer meals across county

Free lunches were back across Lane County as Food for Lane County’s summer meal program opened with daily service at sites from Eugene and Springfield to Oakridge, Blachly and Dexter. The nonprofit expects to serve 60,000 free lunches by the time summer ends, a scale that reflects how many local children depend on school meals during the year.

The program ran Monday through Friday from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. through August 21, with meals available to youth 18 and under at no charge. No identification was required, and the United States Department of Agriculture says no application is needed for free on-site summer meals. Oregon’s summer meal programs serve children and teens ages 1 to 18 at no charge.

Food for Lane County said nearly 75% of public school children in Lane County qualify for free or reduced breakfast and lunch, which makes the summer gap especially significant once classrooms close. The nonprofit said the service was built to reach both urban neighborhoods and outlying communities, with meals offered at parks, community centers and school playgrounds in city areas and a Summer Food Rural Grab-N-Go model for rural families.

That rural model is one of the biggest changes this year. Instead of daily trips, families in more remote parts of the county could pick up five days’ worth of lunches at weekly stops, a setup meant to cut transportation barriers and reduce the burden on caregivers who are balancing work, childcare and rising costs. Food for Lane County said it recently expanded service deeper into rural Lane County, including communities such as Oakridge, Blachly, Dexter, Triangle Lake, Pleasant Hill and Westfir.

The longest stretches of coverage were in the rural sites, where the schedule ran for most of the summer. At Triangle Lake, 20280 Blachly Grange Rd. in Blachly, Grab-N-Go bags were available Tuesdays from June 23 through August 18, 11 a.m. to noon. At Pleasant Hill Community Center, 36386 OR-58, bags were available Thursdays from 10:50 a.m. to 11:20 a.m. from June 25 through August 20.

In Eugene, the program remained a familiar summer backstop at neighborhood sites such as Sheldon Community Center, where site supervisor Bay Ross said the program was “more than just food” and “part of their lives during the summer.” Food for Lane County said it also stocked 11 school-based pantries, 4 early childhood centers and provided 26,000 weekend snack packs for kids to take home, a reminder that the summer meal effort sits inside a much larger local hunger network. The nonprofit said it would post weather- and air-quality-related changes on its social media accounts if needed, keeping the county’s summer safety net flexible as conditions change.