As local schools close for the summer, one local non-profit is kicking into gear to make sure children in the community have enough food to eat.

Each year, the TLC Community Center holds its annual Summer Food Program to help provide meals to children in the community. This year, the program will kick off on June 4 and continue through August 3. No meals will be delivered on July 4.

This will be the 16th year the Center has provided meals to children, and the Center’s Director Angie Odom said it all started because of something children said to her one day when she was visiting a local school.

While speaking at the school, Odom said she asked the children if they were excited that summer break was coming up, and while many of the children said they were, others said they were not looking forward to it.

“I asked why, and they said because they get hungry during the summer,” Odom said.

According to data compiled by the Tennessee Commission on Children and Youth, in 2016 about 52 percent of the children in Carter County qualified for and participated in the free or reduced meal programs through their school.

“During the school year, they get most of their meals at school through the cafeteria,” Odom said. “But, when the kids get out for summer they don’t have access to those meals and many families struggle trying to make up for those lost meals. It can be difficult for them to provide food for their children.”

That interaction with a group of children 16 years ago led Odom to start the Summer Food Program.

Over the years, it has grown from serving one meal a day to about 100 children in the first year, to last year when volunteers served three meals a day, five days a week over a 10-week period with an average of 427 children per day. Over the course of last summer, the Center and its volunteers delivered more than 75,000 meals to children.

Each day of the program, each child will receive a hot meal to eat as well as two bagged meals to help carry them over until the next day. On certain days, the Center also hands out family food boxes that contain a variety of different items.

There will be some changes to the program this year, according to Odom.

Instead of three truck routes, the stops have been combined to make two routes.

Also, Odom said, the food will be delivered earlier this year. The delivery vehicles will leave the Center at noon to make their rounds through the community.

“We’re starting earlier to try to avoid all the afternoon thunderstorms, so it’s safer for the children and safer for us,” Odom said. “Also, with the later time, some of the children were missing their meals because they were going to Vacation Bible School. This way, they can get their food before they go to Bible School and don’t miss a meal.”

The Center is still in need of support to be able to complete the program this year.

“We need financial support to buy the pallets of food that are needed,” Odom said, adding there are additional supplies needed to operate the program.

The Center is also looking for volunteers to help prepare and deliver the food. Anyone interested in donating to the program or volunteering is asked to call Angie Odom at 423-895-8601.

The stops for the Summer Food Program routes this year are listed below.

Route 1:

• Airport Apartments (one stop for all buildings)

• Sunshine Circle (Beside Nancy’s Kitchen on Stateline Road)

• Long Hollow Road (at the white church)

• Riverbottom Road

• Mill Pond Road (the trailer park & the white house)

• Swimming Pool Road (all trailer parks)

• Carl Smith Road

• George Brown Road

• Dennis Cove Road

• Cates Corner

• Betty Street

• Nave Drive

Route 2:

• Lynnwood Apartments

• Lynnridge Apartments

• Rolling Hills (Elizabethton Housing on Arney Hill)

• South Hills Estates

• Watauga Avenue (at the Elizabethton City Schools administration building)

• West G Street Apartments (Bristol, Talladega, Daytona)

• Cottage Avenue

• Locust Street

• Race Street

• Lovers Lane