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Chartwells School Dining Services Partners with Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana to Re-Launch the Spartan Summer Food Truck ProgramINDIANAPOLIS --(Business Wire)-- According to the Map the Meal Gap study conducted by Feeding America, 28.2 percent of children (about 1,620) in Fayette County are food insecure -- lacking the availability and access to food. For the second consecutive year, Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana and Chartwells School Dining Services are teaming up to launch the Spartan Summer Food Truck Program in an effort to provide quality meals to the youth of Fayette County during the summer months when they no longer have access to school meals. The Spartan Summer Food Truck Program will kick off on May 23, 2013 with a mobile pantry event where community members in need of food assistance can receive grocery items at no cost. The launch event will take place at Roberts Park from 3 - 5 pm. After this, the Spartan Summer Food truck will make six daily stops, Monday - Friday, through August 2, 2013, at the following times and locations in and around Fayette County:
The Spartan Summer Food Truck will also serve meals at Greater Vision Church (575 W. Co. Rd. 175 S) from 5:30 - 6 pm Mondays and Fridays. With the support of the ConAgra Foods Foundation Hunger-free Summer Grant, the Gleaners Summer Meals for Kids Program will provide all youth in the Fayette County School System, 18 years of age and under, with a nutritious, shelf-stable meal that can be taken home and eaten for lunch the following day. Each day of the week, the food truck will feature a new menu item such as wraps, salads, fruit, vegetables, juice, yogurt, milk and more. Any child who attends a Spartn Summer Food Truck site 10 times will receive a special prize to reward their participation in the program. "Gleaners is proud to partner with Chartwells and the Fayette County School System again this year to provide children with free lunches this summer," said Cindy Hubert, president and CEO of Gleaners. "Children deserve to have a full stomach and enjoy their summer when school is out and we want to help give them that opportunity." "Fayette County Schools is happy to have created this partnership with Gleaners Food Bank to provide a valuable service to the community," said Siobhan Carey, Chartwells Director of Dining Services, Fayette County Schools. "We want to make sure that all children have access to food while school is out. We think they will be excited to see this bright truck bringing them lunch every day and it will also encourage them to go outside and play!" Fayette County residents can text 'MealsIN' to 877 877 to find the Spartan Summer Food Truck site closest to them. More information can also be found at www.gleaners.org, on its Facebook page, or by calling 2-1-1 Connect2Help. For more information about Chartwells School Dining Services, visit www.eatlearnlive.com and follow us on Facebook and Twitter. About Chartwells School Dining Services Chartwells, a division of Charlotte, NC-based Compass (News - Alert) Group, provides dining services for over 550 public school districts and private schools, comprising over 6000 separate elementary, middle and high schools nationwide. For more information about Chartwells School Dining Services, visit www.eatlearnlive.com. About Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana, Inc On a yearly basis, over 160,000 food-insecure Hoosiers depend on food and other critical grocery products provided by Gleaners Food Bank of Indiana to hunger relief agencies throughout 21 counties in central and southeastern Indiana. Gleaners was founded in 1980 and is a member of Feeding America, the nation's food bank network. Since then, the food bank has distributed over 300 million pounds of food and critical grocery products to over 350 hunger relief agencies serving needy Hoosiers. In addition to food distribution to hunger relief agencies, Gleaners serves our most vulnerable populations, seniors and children, through specialty programs such as the Commodity Supplemental Food Program (CSFP), BackSacks - Weekend Food for Kids, School-Based Food Pantries, and the Summer Feeding Program. In Gleaners' 21-county service area, more than 287,000 people live in poverty-and 103,000 of them are children. To learn more, log onto www.gleaners.org.
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