Louisa County summer meals program serving children throughout the county

LOUISA COUNTY, Va. (WVIR) - School is out, but Louisa County’s summer meals program is allowing children, ages 2 to 18, to continue to get free school lunches.

“We go out and try to hit the areas where the children are, to make it a little bit easier for them to be able to travel a shorter distance and receive free meals during the summer,” said Director of School Nutrition Services Randy Herman.

Louisa County’s summer meals program says that if you want to feed kids, you have to find the kids.

“We started a kind of pilot program. We used a box truck that we already owned and went out to two sites,” said Herman.

Since the program began in 2017, it’s grown to reach more kids every year.

“We’ve expanded now to eight mobile sites, and the children can come out to any one of those sites. At the times listed, they can come out and pick up their lunch,” said Herman.

There’s more than just lunch on the menu.

“We have picnic tables set up at each of the sites and we also have a full enrichment program available to the students,” said Herman. “As the school division, we have different groups that come out and volunteer their time to work with the kids.”

The summer enrichment program includes art, science, technology, engineering, mathematics, and more.

“We have a schedule of all of our sites, addresses and times. And in addition to that, we have a menu for each day and that activity schedule for each day for each site. All that information is located on our website,” said Herman.

Copyright 2022 WVIR. All rights reserved.

Do you have a story idea? Send us your news tip here.