Research additional ways to reach students during the summer months - 1 of 5 years

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This year we focused on expanding our summer meals program to reach more children during the summer.  On December 1, 2015 several staff members attended the Summer BreakSpot meeting in Fort Lauderdale which included staff from FLDACS and Florida Impact.  There is a statewide focus on incorporating mobile feeding units for summer.  Initiating a mobile serving program was postponed due to an issue procuring equipment.  We set our sights on expanding our program to non-school sites and decided to reach out to the West Palm Beach Mandel City Library.

We met with administrators of the WPB Mandel Library in January 2016 to discuss the feasibility of providing summer meals at their facility.  They were elated to have this program added to their summer activities they already had in place for children. We created a Memorandum of Understanding between the school district and the library to provide summer meals inside their facility. The summer program opened at the West Palm Beach Mandel Library From June 13th to August 5th. We served 3,605 total lunches and 5,325 total snacks.  Children were served meals in the children’s library on the 3rd floor.  Word spread quickly that free summer meals were available and which encourage more parents to bring their children to the library.