SAU 6 expands summer food support as school year ends
As summer break nears, SAU 6 says Trinity Episcopal helped almost 90 families with more than 2,200 food bags, and free lunches start June 22.
Claremont families heading into the summer break will have a patchwork of food help from school, church and nonprofit partners as cafeterias close and vacation weeks begin. SAU 6 said Trinity Episcopal Church’s weekend food-bag program supported almost 90 families during the school year and delivered more than 2,200 bags of food.
Trinity’s outreach has become one of the district’s clearest stopgaps for child hunger. The church said it sends bags of food through school nurses for middle and elementary school students in Claremont, with 100 bags going out each week. It also keeps a 24/7 Blessing Box stocked with shelf-stable food, giving families another place to turn outside normal office hours. Trinity says the ministry has been operating for 50 years, underscoring how long local gaps in food access have required community help.
SAU 6 has also used grant money to shore up that safety net. In March, the district said it received a $16,400 grant from Dartmouth-Hitchcock and the New Hampshire Charitable Foundation’s Fund for Greater Claremont. Some of that money was earmarked for school social workers to buy food for families during vacation weeks, a sign that the need does not stop when classes do.
For families who still need help now, SAU 6 said there is remaining New Hampshire Charitable Foundation funding available for food insecurity support, and those in need were told to email Ms. Porter. The district also arranged food pick-up on a first-come, first-served basis for Thursday and Friday during one of its spring break notices, another sign that the response has been built around immediate access rather than long waits.
The school system is also pointing families to the Claremont Soup Kitchen’s free summer lunch program, which starts June 22. Meals can be picked up from 11:00 a.m. to 12:00 p.m. at Barnes Park, Maple Ave near the bowling alley, and the Claremont Soup Kitchen. A separate SAU 6 notice also lists Veterans Park and Monadnock Park as meal sites, showing how widely the summer feeding network reaches across the city.
The scale of need is large enough to make these local links matter. A Cause IQ profile for the Claremont Soup Kitchen and food pantry says the combined operation served 417,674 meals in the most recent fiscal year it lists. As the school year ends, SAU 6, Trinity Episcopal Church and the Claremont Soup Kitchen are carrying more of the burden that school meals normally absorb, keeping food on tables when students are out of class.
This article was produced by Prism’s automated news system from verified source data, official records, and press releases, then run through automated quality and moderation checks before publishing. The system is built and supervised by the people who set the standards it runs under. Read our full AI policy.
Did this article answer your question?
