 Hello everyone, and welcome to today's TechSoup webinar. Thank you for joining us. Today we will be talking about ways you can help youth find a free meal this summer, whether you represent a nonprofit, a library, or a faith-based organization, or even if you are an individual who is looking to make a difference in your community. Today we will be using the ReadyTalk platform. Please use the chat in the lower left corner to send questions and comments to the presenters. We will be tracking your questions throughout the webinar and we will answer them at the designated Q&A section at the end. All of your chat comments will only come to the presenters, but if you have comments or ideas to share, we will forward them back out to the entire group. You do not need to raise your hand to ask a question. Simply type it into the chat box. Should you get disconnected during the webinar, you can reconnect using the same link in your confirmation email. You should be hearing the conference audio through your computer speakers, but if your audio connection is unclear, you can dial in using the phone number in your confirmation email. If you have technical issues, please send us a chat message and we will try to assist you. You can also call the ReadyTalk support number listed on your screen. This webinar is being recorded today and will be archived on the TechSoup website. If you are called away from the webinar or if you have connection issues, you can watch a full recording of the webinar later. You will receive an archived email within 24 hours that will include a link to the recording, the PowerPoint slides, and any links shared during the session. If you are tweeting the webinar today, please use the hashtag TechSoup. We have someone from TechSoup live tweeting this event, so please join in the conversation there. Now TechSoup connects nonprofits, charities, libraries, and foundations with tech products and services as well as information so that you can make informed decisions about technology. TechSoup has been around since 1987 and since then has distributed over 11 million technology donations to over 200,000 nonprofit organizations. In addition to offering products including the latest versions of software like Microsoft Windows and QuickBooks, TechSoup also offers consulting services. For more information about TechSoup products and services, please visit us online at techsoup.org and click on Get Products and Services. You can also subscribe to the TechSoup newsletter to stay up to date on webinars, tech information, and new products and services available through TechSoup. With that, I'd like to welcome you once again to today's TechSoup webinar, Help Youth Find a Free Neal This Summer. Summer Hunger is a serious issue affecting youth in our communities, and we are here to give you some tips on how to help get more youth fed this summer while school is out. My name is Crystal Schimpf, and I will be your host for today's webinar. And I'm joined by three guests who will be sharing information about the Summer Meals program and ways you can help more youth find summer meals in your area. Patrice Chamberlain is the director of the California Summer Meal Coalition, which is a statewide collaborative effort dedicated to fighting youth hunger. Patrice will give us an overview of the Federal Summer Food Service program and summer meals in California. Michael Cox is the director of public services at the Pueblo City County Library District in Pueblo, Colorado. Michael is going to tell us how his library district helps youth find summer meals, both as a meal site and also as a referral agency. Last but not least, Marnie Webb is the CEO of Caravan Studios, which is a division of TechSoup Global. Caravan uses a collaborative approach to solving community problems using technology, and recently launched the range app which helps locate summer meal sites. Marnie is going to tell us about several technology tools including range that can be used to help connect youth with summer meals. Assisting us with chat, we have several folks from the TechSoup and Caravan teams. Becky Wiegen, Sarah Washburn, and Anna Jaeger, who will be keeping track of your questions and joining you in the conversation. On Twitter, we have Ginny Meese under the TechSoup4Libes handle. And if you are on Twitter today, be sure to use the hashtag TechSoup to be involved in the conversation there. Today, we will be taking a broad look at the Summer Meal Program starting off with a brief discussion of what it is and why it is important. We will take a look at an example of how the Summer Meal Program integrates into library programming and how it can be promoted through library services. We will look at several tools available to help find summer meal sites and talk about what you can do to help youth in your community. Our focus today is really on how to help get youth fed, regardless of whether or not your organization provides those meals directly. This is about ways we can make information available and make referrals. And I hope that you all walk away with a few new ways to help youth in your community this summer. Please remember to submit any questions and comments in the chat throughout the webinar. We'll have time for questions and answers at the end, and we'll get to as many questions as we can during the webinar. We will follow up with you via email if we run out of time and your question was not answered. Your chat comments will come to us as presenters, but we'll share them back out with the entire group. Also, just a reminder that this webinar will be archived and sent to you via email after the webinar is completed. Now, before we get started, we'd like to know a little bit about you. So in this poll that you see on your screen, or you should be seeing on your screen, tell us what your level of knowledge is about the Summer Meal Program and about summer hunger issues in general. To respond to the poll, simply select the radio button next to the response that best fits. Are you an expert when it comes to summer meals? Do you have a fair amount of working knowledge about the program, or are you a novice here to learn? I'll give you a few seconds to respond to this poll, and you get a chance to really think about it, and just pick the answer that represents you the best. I'll give you a few more seconds. I can still see that responses are coming in, and I can see already that the majority are definitely new to the Summer Meals Program and are here to learn today, which is great. You have come to the right place. So I'm going to give just a count down here. We'll close the poll in 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. So now you should be able to see the results, and we can see that many of us are here to learn. Now I'm sure you have many other experiences involving youth and programming that you'll be able to relate to this information to today and think about how you can help with the Summer Meal Program. Now for those of you who are experts or who have a fair amount of information, please share your ideas and your experiences in the chat. And like I said, we'll share them back out with the entire group. Now another thing we'd like to know is how you have been involved in Summer Meal Programs in the past. And in this one, you can actually select multiple responses to select all that apply. And this is looking at the past. So in years past 2013 or earlier, have you served meals at your site? Have you referred youth to other meal sites? Is this your first time getting involved? Or if you're selecting other, tell us in the chat what it is you've done to be involved in Summer Meals in the past. And then we will put that out to the rest of the group. I know some of you may be involved for the first time this year, and that's okay, we're really just looking at the past today. And this helps us know what your level of current experience is. So yeah, if you have other experiences, tell us in the chat, and we will share it back out with everyone. And it looks like the responses are slowing down here as well. So I'm going to give another little countdown to close the poll, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. We'll close the poll. And again, we see a lot of first-time involvement which makes sense based on the last question. Some of you have done other types of involvement, so hopefully we'll get to see some of your ideas as well. And then quite a few of you, your involvement has been referring you to meal sites. And hopefully these tools we share with you today will give you some greater ideas on how to continue that service and improve on it. And so thank you for telling us a little bit about yourself. And now I'm going to have Marnie tell us why Summer Meals are so important, and introduce this topic to all of us. Marnie? Hi, thank you for the introduction, and hello everyone. So as Crystal explained a little bit in the opening, we at Caravan Studios have become engaged with the issue of Summer Meals. And Patrice Chamberlain is going to describe this just a little bit in more detail, but we did want to share with you the problem that first brought us into this issue area. We do community events called Generators where we work with food rescue organizations. And we also interviewed and talked to county officials and librarians in the state of California. And we learned what was to us this startling fact that for every six youth that take advantage of federally funded lunch programs during the school year, only one of them is accessing Summer Meals. I mean five of those kids are facing food insecurity during the summer. And that food insecurity leads to a greater summer learning loss. And those youth gain weight two to three times as fast during the summer months. So we put that information together with this huge number of kids that weren't accessing the Summer Meals and the impacts of that food insecurity on their academics and on their health. And so we started asking ourselves as a team, how can we increase access to Summer Meals? And as part of asking ourselves that question, we also talked to people, Patrice Chamberlain among them, who gave us more insight into what it's like for these youth that are seeking Summer Meals and what the Summer Meals programs are like. And with that I'll hand it off to you Patrice. Patrice Thanks, Marnie. So as Marnie pointed out, there is a real disconnect between what's happening during the school year and what's happening in the summer. So what I'm hoping to do is expand a little bit on what's happening during the summer and how USDA Summer Meal programs provide an opportunity to really help build a summer safety net for kids in your community. It's really more than just a meal. We're really talking about pooling together resources and building partnerships to create that infrastructure in the summer. So what's happening when school is out? So you know it's safe to say that when school is out for the summer that the kids that are getting free and reduced price lunch during the school year that need doesn't magically disappear during the summer. And along with that, food insecurity has consequences related to the children's development, their cognitive, behavioral, and physical development. So I'm really looking at both the individual consequences but knowing that that ultimately is going to have longer-term impacts on the well-being and prosperity of our communities. So in addition to those individual impacts, it's harder for low-income families to make ends meet during the summer. Without access to the school lunch program it's difficult for families to offset those costs that they were able to during the school year. So the National Organization Chair of Strength last year conducted a survey of low-income parents and found that almost 40% had a harder time making ends meet during the summer. And that 34% of those families actually did not have enough food during the summer. So this is a really real problem that we're dealing with. So as Marnie indicated earlier, it really creates a potential perfect storm of bad outcomes. We have the food insecurity piece. We have increased risk of childhood obesity. As Marnie said, kids can gain weight two to three times faster during the summer than during the school year, which makes it more difficult for that weight to come off during the school year. In addition, without kind of taking a holistic approach to promoting nutrition that includes summer, we're also looking at how this can undermine the nutrition promotion efforts that are happening during the school year. So kids are year-round beings, so we really need to look at promoting healthy habits year-round as we work to create a healthier next generation. In addition to these health outcomes there's also the impact of the summer learning loss. As many of you probably know whether you're working in a nonprofit or in a library, that summer learning loss can have a really big impact on low-income kids. The National Summer Learning Association reports that low-income kids not only are losing the grade level math skills that other kids are experiencing, they're also experiencing a higher rate of reading skills, loss in reading skills as well. And what this means is that there's the additional cost of reteaching in the fall and the cumulative impact that that has on the achievement gap. So summer presents a real opportunity for us to address both the health and the learning impact on kids. So USDA summer nutrition programs provide a really amazing opportunity, I think, to do this. And I'm going to just provide a really, really basic overview of the program. And I know that Crystal will share out more specific details after the webinar. So the U.S. Department of Agriculture offers summer nutrition programs. You may have heard of it referred to as the summer food service program or the seamless summer feeding option. And that's just part of the school lunch program. And basically the idea is to help ensure that low-income kids have access to a healthy meal during the summer just to eliminate that gap that can happen when school closes. And typically these meals are served in low incomes that have a high population of low-income kids. But the benefit, too, is that all kids in the neighborhood can have a lunch. So there's no ID required or documentation. So it's a great opportunity to ensure that all kids have access to a healthy meal without any kind of stigma. And just to introduce you to a couple of terms that I might refer to, the sponsor is the agency that acts as the administrative agent. A lot of times it's the school district. It could also be a nonprofit such as a food bank or church, too. And then the site is the place where the meals are actually served. So it could be a library. It could be a Boys and Girls Club. There's a lot of opportunities as to where the meals are being served. And the general premise is that they should be in areas that are serving a high population of low-income kids. So I think in the simplest sense, summer meals are so great because we know that food brings people together. And I'm sure that in many of your communities, your agencies and your cities and counties have been hit hard by budget cuts. So summer meal programs really provide a great opportunity to bring community partners together to really identify who has what to bring to the proverbial table. And as you can see here, I've created just this short list of who you can help bring to the table ranging from schools and food banks to healthcare practitioners. There really is no end to who can be brought to the table to really kind of see what kind of creative endeavors can be developed to support youth in your community. And just to give you a few brief examples from here in California, in Bakersfield, the school district worked with its nutrition services, worked with its academic department to develop summer learning materials that were distributed to kids before they left for the summer. And then they were encouraged to come to the school cafeterias during the summer, which were nice, air-conditioned learning labs that had access to tutors and computers, along with a free healthy breakfast and lunch. In the Bay Area, we had the YMCA working with residents from Stanford Medical School to really connect the health and healthcare piece and help jointly operate a summer meal program. In the Redwood Empire Food Bank, they do a lot around nutrition education. So in addition to providing summer meals, they were also able to really work with kids and their families to learn about gardening and how to develop healthy habits at home. One of the projects that I'm just going to briefly touch on that I'm really excited about that we've been working on in California is our Lunch at the Library project. So what that is, is we developed the California Summer Meal Coalition, developed a statewide partnership with the California Library Association with the support of the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. And really what we wanted to do was identify how we could bring together public library summer reading and other programs with the summer meals. So we worked with various communities throughout California to partner, to create different models of how we could bridge that summer learning and summer nutrition gap. And we had really great success. We started with just a few libraries in 2013 and now we will be working with 45 libraries in California. And I bring this up really as just an example of how we can create these summer safety nets to ensure that kids are healthy and engaged in summer and that that gap doesn't happen. And we will have, right now we are developing an online clearinghouse of information that can help libraries that are interested in either becoming summer meal sites or really working as a promotional partner. And one of the things that I really wanted to mention in bringing up this example is that there are a lot of different ways to create partnerships either in bringing programming to summer meal sites or acting as a promotional partner. And I think that's one of the ways that all of you can get involved is really thinking about how you can either partner with summer meal providers or how you can help promote them because we really have a great need for trusted messengers to help get the word out about summer meal programs. So here is my contact information and I am happy to help provide more information on either libraries and how they can get involved in summer meal programs. I noticed that one of you in the chat indicated you were looking for information that might be able to help sway your director. And I think one of the important keys to remember about summer meal programs is that this is a real opportunity to help support your agency's goals as well. It's really not just about serving meals. It's about working collaboratively with community partners. So with that I will pass it back to you, Crystal. But again I hope you all are happy to reach out to me and I'm happy to help in any way that I can. Great. Thank you so much Patrice. I mean that just gives us a really good overview of the summer meal program and the summer food service program, especially for those on the call. This is new information for them and certainly sets the stage for what we are about to talk about. And I love the way you talk about the different types of programs that may be integrated into the meal service. And so one thing that we actually want to think about is where might we reach kids in the summer, whether it's for providing the meals or providing information about the meals. And so I actually have another poll up for everybody and I'd like to see where in your community do you think kids are hanging out when school is out? And you can check as many of these options as are applicable to your situation. Is it a church community space or a daycare? Are kids just hanging out at home? Or do they go to the library or a park? Are they in school actually during the summer or some type of summer learning program? What about YMCA's or rec center's, Boys and Girls Club, that sort of thing. And then again if it's other, share in the chat exactly what it is that you think they are doing that doesn't apply on this list. Or maybe you've got a really specific example because we'd like to hear that too. And if you're not sure, that's okay. And I know some of you maybe are representing your entire state or you're here as an individual and this may not be a question that's easy for you to answer and so that's okay if you don't know as well. I see lots of answers coming in and I'll close the poll in just a minute. It looks like it's slowing down so I'll do the countdown. 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. And we'll close that poll. Well now you can see everybody's responses. So it looks like definitely the library and the parks stand out on top. I know we have lots of libraries here today so that's a great place to get information out to kids. And if you are a meal site as well then even better, lots of activity at the YMCA's and rec center's and also at home. So those are some of our biggest categories and you kind of see the spread there. So I know there are many places we find kids in the summer and this just really gives us a lot to think about. Now Patrice also mentioned some of the different things happening at libraries in California this summer and the lunch at the library program. Well now we're going to hear from Michael who is at the Pueblo City County Library District in Pueblo, Colorado. And he's going to talk about how they have been reaching youth in their community both within the library and outside of the library. They are both a meal program site and a referral agency and they are working on ways to increase staff training when it comes to making referrals to other meal sites. Michael? Crystal, thank you very much. So I will be talking about how the Pueblo City County Library District got involved with Summer Meals and some of the benefits that we have realized from this partnership. I'll share some concerns that staff have voiced to me which demonstrate a need for more awareness about access to Summer Meals. And I'll end by sharing how we are planning to better focus our efforts towards our role as a referral agency. Our introduction to the Summer Meal program came with our outreach department. Years ago we developed a program called Satellite Libraries. These are locations within existing libraries, often school libraries, in which the public library adds supplemental collections to provide access to materials for all ages and interests. And of course we also provide other typical library programs such as story times and other programs. Many of these school locations were Summer Meal sites and we were surprised to learn that even when the school year ends, school lunches may continue. We began partnering with the Summer School Lunch Program meaning we just altered our program times as a way to build capacity of people participating in our own library programs and it was successful. Then about 10 years ago we initiated a seasonal program in the summer called Books in the Park. Books in the Park allows us to more directly reach our target audience of families often of lower socioeconomic status who may not otherwise utilize library services. This may be because they are unable to travel to our brick and mortar locations or possibly because of the institutional nature of a library building just may be intimidating. Seeing our Books in the Park program as an entry point for people to begin using the library services more fully, we changed the services a bit. We removed many of the barriers to use that our more traditional library locations have. So no library card account is required. Books circulate on an honor system so there are no fines. Shoes and shirts are not required at our Books in the Park and you are welcome to run and make noise. Really what I found is that Books in the Park naturally emphasizes the fun interest-driven model of engaging reading that public libraries do so well. As we began to develop the Parks program we were able to build several new partnerships. The City Parks and Recreation Department of course, YMCA has started providing programming at our locations. Community advocates such as politicians and PV personalities, they all jump at the chance to read stories with children at these locations. This is a fun, engaging way to participate in the summer. We were surprised to be approached by the School Summer Meals program suggesting that we begin providing summer meals at our locations in the parks. Because we already had this existing relationship with the program we had seen it functioning kind of alongside of our services. We quickly said yes. And this is largely because we knew that library with staff really would not be required to take on much work at all. So here are the summer meals. Being a service point for summer meals really takes very little staff time. Each morning we communicate a prediction of how many meals we need and this can vary greatly. Sometimes neighborhoods put together some events and we know that many more people will be participating that day. So we phone in how many meals we think we'll need that day. And if we're off the meal sites will bring more food in. The food is then prepared in an approved kitchen usually within an area of school in our case. And that staff then delivers it to our site. They serve the food. And all we are required to do is to provide access to hand washing and disposal of trash. Easy enough. Staff are required to take a brief online training about food safety. And what we get back is of tremendous value for our own goals as well as for our customers as well. It's clear to us that many people show up to our parks in order to take advantage of these free meals. So we've planned programs again to coordinate with our meal times in order to increase that program attendance. We know that schools are sending home flyers listing all of the community summer meal sites. And the great incentive of a meal along with the marketing from schools is a real win for our parks program. Last year we served 3,000 people over the eight weeks of the program. Staff serving youth have told me that some youth seem to spend all day at the library. Sometimes asking people for money to purchase food from vending machines or telling staff, I'm hungry. So our staff are aware of the need. But unaware that free meals are available throughout the community, staff have sometimes resorted to personally providing food that's happened. Or they've consulted with me about whether or not it's time to get the Department of Social Services involved. And summer meals is a great solution. So learning about resources to find free meals has been a great solution for staff worried about the well-being of hungry youth. We've had one instance when a young customer came to a program that involved using food to build a diorama. We were playing with our food. We were building stuff. And this young customer requested that they eat the food and they didn't really want to participate in the building piece of the program. And this really highlighted to us that there is a need for library staff to be more familiar with information resources regarding free meals. So in preparing for this presentation, I learned a lot. I learned that a few staff outside of those working directly with our books in the park locations or our satellite library locations, a few staff are really aware of the summer meal service being provided. So this year we have a few actions planned in order to step up our ability to become a successful referral agency. First, we plan to be prepared to distribute paper flyers, the same paper flyers that the schools are distributing, listing the area summer meal locations. And I do want to note that of course the big disadvantage of paper is that paper is inevitably immediately out of date. The plethora of flyers is that they can stand as a physical reminder for staff to share the information and they can also serve as invitations for customers to inquire or to ask more questions. So if we've just got these out and about the library they can come and ask us more questions. Each year all staff are given a brief training about summer reading program activities. And summer meals are being added to the training this year. So the training will include resources that are kept up to date such as hunger.org and an app called Range which I know you'll be hearing more about. Both of these provide access to all of the available information about local meal locations. We're also working to bring more resources into our park locations to share online access to this information. So in order to provide a hands-on experience with information available online we're going to be bringing a hotspot to the parks. We'll be bringing a laptop and an iPad. So staff will be able to both demonstrate these resources and also help our customers find the resources on their own devices. So that staff will be prepared to provide many tech trainings surrounding the use of the Range app and other online resources. One interesting problem of bringing technology to our parks as we've been thinking this through just from our past experiences is the need to keep our devices cool as the temperatures rise. So we're planning on filling a cooler with ice and creating a barrier there so that if our devices begin to overheat we can throw those in the cooler and get them ready to keep rolling. There's a discussion now to bring summer meals to all of our library locations in the future. Our experience has been nothing but positive and in fact we've learned some things about some of our own food programs and some of the regulations that we really should be following. What we know is that food brings people together. Stories and reading can then build experiences and grow knowledge. And it has been said to feed the mind, start with the stomach. So to find our next eager readers perhaps we can start by recommending a nice place to find a warm meal this summer. With that I know that I'll be passing on the presentation. Great. Thank you Michael. And that really is, it shows us a great example of how a library can be involved. In your case you are involved with the actual summer meal sites but you can also be involved in just helping families and children connect to meals. So thank you for sharing that with us. So now we're going to move on to have Marni tell us how several tools, to tell us about several tools that are available to help make referrals to summer meal sites. And she will tell us also some of the ways that you can help in your community. Marni? Thank you. So you heard about the issue of summertime meals for youth and making sure they have continuous access to food. I love Patrice's comment that kids are year-round beings and they need to eat during the summertime too. And you've heard about what one library is doing to engage not just by feeding meals but by engaging their librarians in giving solid referrals to other meal sites throughout their area. So what I'd like to talk about now are three different solutions that you can use to help make solid referrals in your community to youth who are seeking summertime meals. The first is one Michael mentioned is a website called Y. They run the National Hunger Hotline and they have a database that you can access through any web browser that helps you find food. You see what the database entry form looks like here on this page. It allows you to put in an organization name, an address, even just your state or your zip code, and to by hitting the summer meals with a blue arrow just appeared next to it. For search, you'll see those summer meal locations. Interestingly, I took some of the places you all said that youth hung out during the summer. You mentioned that they hung out at home. I put in both apartments into the search bar just to see nationwide how many sites had the word apartment in the title. 1,865 sites so far have signed up to serve summertime meals at apartments. There are 253 libraries serving summertime meals at this point. 192 mobile home parks and 68 pools. And this is with just the states that are reporting at this point. We aren't yet into summer so states are still submitting their summer meal sites to Y Hunger so more organizations go into that database every day. When I looked up libraries two weeks ago, for example, they were 172. And just a few minutes ago, they were 253. So those numbers that I just said are going to go up. So food is all over and it is in places we may not think of as normal food sites. Also on the Y Hunger website you can find some flyers that you can download and you can post in your library. These are great as Michael said because they promote awareness. They don't have the information on them that gets old or changes. These include the Y Hunger hotline. The wonderful thing about people, families calling the hotline is that they have somebody that may answer their questions about summer meal sites but help meet the other nutritional needs of the family as well, not just those summer meals for youth. So it is a terrific resource to make available but also just to build awareness that there is help in the community. An organization called Share Our Strength runs a campaign, No Kid Hungry. And they are working hard to help kids do what they call save summer by making sure that communities rather save summer, by making sure that kids that are facing hunger have appropriate access to meals. And one of the tools that they make available is a text message service. You simply text the word food to 877-877 and you get back a response that asks you for your address. You will see in this instance when I was doing it I just replied with a city and state name and I got summer meal locations back. As you can see I was using a smart phone whenever I did this but you could do it from a feature phone as well, anything that you can text from. You can text and get locations. This again is a wonderful resource to make available. I want to emphasize as you go in and start to test and play with these tools that we are showing you that you may look at a state and you may find that there are very few summer meals available. Two or five. Well it is simply because that state hasn't submitted all of the summer meal sites yet. So that information comes in between now and approximately June 15th. So again those numbers just increase. The other thing that I want to emphasize is the sites change locations over the course of the summer. So a site may only be open in the month of July or it may only be open in August. They may be open for two weeks and find out that they need to adjust their hours or change their location because they aren't reaching the use that they wanted to reach. That is one of the reasons that you should go back and check these often to make sure the information you have and you are using is current. The last tool I'm going to show you is the one that we developed with help from people like Patrice and Michael called Range. Range is a mobile app that works on a smartphone and allows you to locate the nearest place where youth can get a free summertime meal. And it looks the way you expect an app like this to look. Whenever you open your browser it figures out where you are or open the app on your phone it figures out where you are and gives you nearby meal locations. They are just shown with a pin the way that you are looking at what you are looking at now. And then you can tap on any one of those pins and you can get a little bit more information whenever we look at Range now. Most of the sites say coming soon because summer hasn't started yet. So even though we may know where the site is they haven't started serving summer meals yet in most places. You can tap on that again and you can get more detail about the site. So it provides a description. In this case we have the starting and end date. We have the days of the week that they are serving and the times that they are serving. So it also gives you an opportunity to get directions or to call. Whenever you are looking at them you can click the little share icon in the description either in the full detail or the small detail and you can start to collect sites and then you can share those sites with somebody else via text message or email. The interface looks like what you see now not your familiar text messaging or email interface and it does that because we use third party tools to share the information out. And that has a couple of advantages. One the text message or email goes to the recipient with a standard email address and text address not your personal phone number or email address. And it keeps the recipient's number from being stored on the phone. So it just provides a little bit of anonymity for both the sender and the receiver. So what do we hope happens as a result of community members engaging with the tools that we were sharing today? Well the first thing that we want to do all of us is just increase the number of low income youth who access summer meals. I will tell you as somebody that was four months ago a newcomer to this issue I was shocked to learn how hard it is for kids and families to find out the places that they need to go to eat. And just the enormous opportunity that we have as community members to share that information. We hope to increase the number of youth who access it by making it exactly easier for people to share their information. We want to increase the amount of accurate referrals within the community. That's why we are reaching out to all of you today to share this information. We are very hopeful that you will engage with these tools and you will share the specific locations of summer meal sites with your community members. And then finally we hope that your engagement increases your knowledge about the summer meals program, allows you to think about different ways you might participate next summer, whether it's bringing programs to summer meal sites, being a summer meal site yourself, or just being more and more prepared to be able to offer good solid recommendations to those in your community. I know that we have said in the chat, and I believe Crystal said at the opening that we will be sharing the resources with all of you after this as well as many of the answers to your questions. But I did want to give you just to show you in here the slide that gives you the link to the specific resources that I mentioned as a part of this. And we really hope that you will help save summer for millions of children by downloading and using these tools, bookmarking them on your computers, your public access computers, and the computers that you use, and printing and posting these flyers so that people know that there are community resources available to them, and these school-age youth don't have to go hungry during the summertime. Great. Thank you, Marnie, for giving us such a thorough overview to those tech tools. And now it is time to do some questions and answers. And we've been getting a few, and I know lots of those answers have been actually coming through in the chat. But before we do questions and answers, I do want to mention that to follow up on what Marnie just said about those resources coming through in an archive email which you'll get within 24 hours of the closing of the webinar today, somebody asked questions about being able to download the app. And it is available in the three app stores for Windows, Google Play, and Apple. And the links to the pages in those app stores will be included in the archive email. So if you're having trouble finding it, that's one way you may be able to find it more easily. Also, I'll just say that if we aren't able to answer your question here on this call, maybe it might take us a little bit more research or we don't have time to get to all of the questions because lots of good ones are coming through, then we will follow up with you via email. And so please do add any questions that you have. Now, I know that one of the questions we got, this is actually a really good one. The emphasis of range and of many of the resources that you just shared, Marnie, are on the Summer Food Service Program for Children. But is there any plan to expand the tech options to all food sites, not just those for children? Do you know of any plans that may exist for that in the future? Sure. The Why Hunger website that I showed you does have a robust series of food sites for adults and children all throughout the nation. And the Hunger Hotline also provides information about other food sites. I don't know of that we can look up and find out any other either mobile or texting options that provide comparable access to other ongoing food sites or food resources so we can find that and follow up with you. I'll be frank, when we started looking at this issue and the big bundle of hunger-related needs in this country, the place where we saw the single biggest deficit and provide the most resource was on this gap that you face during the summertime. And so that's the place that we started our exploration. But we've been learning a lot in this process and hope to be able to package other resources that provide access to information that youth may need for other reasons and that adults may need in terms of food. Great. Well, it's good to know there are at least a few other resources out there that exist currently and there may be some others coming along as the technology improves for that. Now another question that we've been having is how can one become a summer feeding site, a summer meal site? And while that wasn't the emphasis of this webinar today because for many states we're actually right at the deadline right now to join, I will say that in the archive email we are including that information so that you can find out more about who your state contacts are and find out about getting involved if it's too late this year than potentially for next year. And it's good to see that there is interest for people on this call today for getting involved. And Patrice, I just want to ask, is there anything that you want to add to that for those who might be interested in becoming a partner as a meal site in the future? Sorry, it took me a minute to unmute myself. I think I would just recommend connecting with the state agencies that will be provided in the follow-up email that you're sending out. It would probably be your best option as well as connecting with your state anti-hunger advocates. Great. And Patrice, I've got another question for you. I think you might be able to answer this one best. There have been a couple of questions related to how many kids show up at the site or how many kids might be eligible in an area. And I think there is also an underlying question there which is how do you know that you're not sending somebody to a site that isn't going to have enough meals available? What do sites do if they get more kids in a day that they had anticipated? What do they do to meet that need? So to address your first question, as far as predicting participation, it really varies on the site. I think that for an organization like a library they tend to know roughly how many kids that usually come in during the summer so they have a pretty good sense. Largely, it's a bit of a guessing game. So I think initially when summer meal sites, whether they're libraries or some other nonprofit or a park site, it's a little bit of a guessing game. And you really have to kind of ballpark what you had the previous day and adjust your orders. So it can be a challenge. But I think that's partly why libraries make great sizes that they typically have a better sense of how many kids come in during summer and they can do outreach based on that. Like if they have a standard number of kids that come in and that meets the space that they have to feed, they don't have to do a lot of outreach. But yeah, it really does depend and realistically there are days when you may run out of meals. And I think for most summer meal sites families are pretty accepting of hearing, just come back tomorrow. We'll be serving again tomorrow. I think families understand that. But that's kind of part of how the book program works. Great. Thank you. And Michael, do you have anything to add to that? Having been at an actual meal site, do you have any experience on that front? Yeah, I saw somebody here in the chat recently posted that, and this was my experience as well, there have been occasions when we ran out of meals and the staff were able to go back to the kitchen and bring some food back with them. We've never had to turn people away. Maybe we've been lucky, but I agree we were able to predict fairly well how many people to expect, but in those rare occasions when we run out of food, the staff were able to get back to the kitchen and bring some back. Great. Great. So yeah, it sounds like it really depends on the site, but everybody's in the position of doing the best that they can and then adapting as things change. So Michael, we have a question for you about staff training. Now you said that you were going to be doing some staff training and integrating it into your summer reading program training, but what are the specific types of things you might try to train staff on and how might you pass that information on to them? We have people here of all different size organizations, so if you have any tips on how to pass on that information it would be helpful. Sure. Our plan this year is every year about now as we approach summer reading, one of the staff participating in that summer reading program will make it to every department meeting. We talk briefly about how the program works and we're including in that staff training this year information about how to find information about the summer meals so that we can make sure that we can pass that on to customers if they need it. And as I said, sometimes just having those paper flyers around keeps at the top of our mind and at the customer's fingertips and they often will ask us questions based on the types of things that we've got lying around the library as well. I think the biggest element of training for our staff this year is going to be for the staff who are at the park locations ensuring that they're comfortable using the devices and understanding how to identify when we may need to cool them down. We don't have experience there yet, but just ensuring that they're comfortable. The fear is that they're going to be getting questions not just about the range app but all types of questions about the device. So really we're needing to get them comfortable to demonstrate the technologies for other purposes as well. Great, great. So it sounds like you've got a couple of different things up your sleeve. I just also want to refer back to our archive that's going to be coming out. We have several links there that have some frequently asked questions and some other informational sites both that come from the USDA and then also from the Y-Hunger and other sites that we've shared with you. So there will be many resources with additional information there. Now one question that's been asked is, Trina asked, is there a place to find out statistics? And I'm guessing this is about your local area on the number of children that qualify for free or reduced lunches. And so I don't know if, Patrice, if you happen to know of any places where we might find statistics. I think that the easiest way to get that information is to contact your school district, nutrition services department. Usually they'll use school data is the best way to figure out kind of whether or not your agency is located in an eligible area. And you can also use census data as well. And Crystal, we can connect to make sure that that information is in the archive that's sent out. Great, great. Yeah, and I know in this day and age we're so used to being able to just search online and find that information, but sometimes it's actually easier to pick up the phone and call somebody or get in touch with our local contacts because that statistic may not be online. So that's great advice. And can I add one more point to that? So summer meal sites also need to be separated by a certain geographic distance too. So while your agency may fall in an eligible area, it's important to talk with your school district or whomever to make sure that there isn't already a summer meal site nearby. So that's something to think about too when you're looking at eligibility. Great, great. Good advice there as well. And actually we have a question from Sam who asks if non-USDA sponsored sites, I'm imagining meal sites, can those be submitted to the state? And better yet, can they be submitted to these tools like Y-Hunger, these data sets that are being aggregated and used for these amazing tools? Marni, I'm going to pass this one to you. Sure, so Y-Hunger, the USDA doesn't mandate but strongly encourages that all of the states submit their data about summer meal sites to Y-Hunger so that it can be more easily accessed and found. And in fact, last year it was a pretty robust listing of all of the summer meal sites. So that is typically submitted by the state coordinators which differs by the states exactly who and which department that is. And that's part of the follow-up information that we can share. An easy way, you can easily look, search in the Y-Hunger database by simply typing in your state name. And it will give you just a quick glimpse of whether or not the sites have been submitted. If you have a large state, you see only two sites available, then you can trust that your sites haven't yet been submitted by the state coordinator. If you do see a critical mass of summer sites in there, hundreds or thousands of summer meal sites in there, you can look for those in specific communities. And then contact your summer meals coordinator if you feel that some of the sites are missing. An important thing to remember is what, as I said, the sites change location over the course of the summer so you might have, or there might be a summer meal site that's operating in August. It may be a while before that one shows up. Some of the states are pretty good about keeping their data, the site data very accurate. And so they take down old sites and put up new sites. So it does change over the course of the summer. All right, thank you. So I have time for just one more question before we move into our wrap-up. And Marty, I'm going to direct this one to you as well because you just presented us with three tools, but really it's more than that because some of the sites also have the hotline, why hunger has the hotline, and share our strength, no kids hungry has the text tool. And when we're dealing with all of these tools, sometimes it's easy for us, especially if we're in a small organization and we're handling all of this technology and these phone numbers and these websites to make a decision in a moment about what's the best way to use one of these tools. Which tool do you use in a situation to help or for a youth to a meal site or a family to a meal site? And do you have any tips for people just to kind of in the moment decide which tool they should use or how to keep them all on hand and available? Any tips in that area? Sure thing. I think whenever you're in the library and you have access to your desktop computers and the computers that are available for patrons using the why hunger database makes the most sense. It's accessible via a browser. The internet connection is already there. It's easy to segment out the summer meal sites and find directions. You may be able to print from the library so you can print. And Stan, it's probably the easiest tool for a librarian to use to make a referral or help somebody find a place on a public access computer when they're inside the library. And the same may be true in any other kind of organization that has a client that's asking for help. As you probably do have a computer or a laptop at your desk that you can quickly use the why hunger database to find food. I think if you're out in the parks, you're outside of your building helping people, that's when the mobile tools, having those already loaded and ready to go on your phone, your mobile devices, and know how to use them, that's what's going to make the most sense because it keys into where you are. And it is a quick and easy way for you to get the information out of your pocket. So I think those are the two tools that we as community members can best use to find the referral information and then share in the way that's appropriate to the individual that we're talking to in the place where we're at. And if we have our answering questions about people about what resources can they take with them to be able to find the lunch sites on their own, we can refer them to range and to the why hunger database. But I honestly think the two most robust tools in that way are the text messaging service that we shared as a part of this, but also the why hunger hotline because that gives you a person on the other end that helps with more of your needs. And while it can be hard for people to get on the phone with a stranger and ask for help like that, it is very much a resource that can provide them with more than just what they asked for. And point them to resources that they may not know exist. So I think you divide it up by the location out and about. Use a mobile app in your office, in a public location where you have desktop or laptop computers with Internet access. Use a why hunger database. You want to refer the patrons to things, those two are good services but probably the hotline in the text messaging service are the best. Excellent, excellent. That's an excellent breakdown for us to walk away with today. And that leads us right into our wrap up. And so thank you, Marnie, for that great explanation. But as we are about to wrap up, first of all, I'll ask those of you who are still on the line with us to stay on the line because we'll have a survey for you at the end where you can tell us what you thought about today's webinar. And in the meantime, I want you to just think about what did you learn today and what tools are going to be most helpful for you in whatever situation you are in? And then lastly, what is it that you're going to do next? We're all in different positions of power in our organizations or maybe working as individuals. But just think of some of the things you can do. Can you tell youth and their families about summer meal sites? Can you download the range app? Bookmarking that yhunger.org and share our strengths websites. And then most importantly, share this information that you got today with others in your organization or other colleagues you know from other organizations outside of yours, other community partners you may be aware of, other nonprofits and faith-based orgs and libraries. I do hope that you learned a few new things today to take with you and a reminder that that archive email will come out. And in that look for a handout that lists some of the things you can do right now and things you might be able to do next year as well to be helpful in this area. I want to thank all of our speakers today, Marni, Michael, and Patrice for sharing their expertise. And also to those of you assisting on the chat with the many questions that we got in and comments that we got in today. Thanks to ReadyTalk for being a sponsor. And thanks to all of you for joining us. Please stay on the line again to take a brief survey about your experience today which will help us improve our webinar offerings in the future. And have a great day.