An LCPS Child Nutrition worker distributes lunch and breakfast from the back of a school bus at a stop in northern Lenoir County recently. The district’s feeding program, designed to bridge the nutrition gap while schools and school cafeterias are closed during the coronavirus outbreak, has received grants totaling $4,000 to help sustain the effort. Submitted photo.

Lenoir County Public Schools has secured two grants totaling $4,000 to help sustain a program that provides no-cost meals to youth in the county while schools are closed due to the coronavirus outbreak.

GENYOUth and The Dairy Alliance awarded $2,000 each to feeding programs at North Lenoir and South Lenoir high schools from the organizations’ COVID-19 Emergency School Nutrition Fund.

Now in its sixth week, LCPS’s feeding program distributes more than 5,000 hot lunches and next-day breakfasts each weekday to youth 18 and younger and any LCPS student regardless of age.

“We are grateful to have received these grants for both North Lenoir and South Lenoir feeding sites. The money will be used for continuing our efforts in serving our children,” Danelle Smith, the district’s Child Nutrition director, said.

The program began March 17, the day after public schools closed across North Carolina, and has operated continuously, including the six days of Easter break designated as holidays or vacation days for public school personnel in the state.

Meals are distributed at five curbside pickup sites – Kinston, North Lenoir and South Lenoir high schools, Southeast Elementary and E.B. Frink Middle – and delivered by school bus to 20 locations around the county. 

The program is nearing the 100,000 mark in total meals distributed.