As summer break begins winding down for local children, so too did the annual Summer Food Program, which saw more than 92,000 meals served to kids in the community this year.

The TLC Community Center completed the Summer Food Program on Friday, August 3, with a total of 92,317 meals served to children. That number showed a marked increase over last year’s program when volunteers served 75,016 meals.

Volunteers served 72,917 meals in Carter County and 19,400 meals at a satellite site in Bristol.

“What made it different this year is in the past we only did deliveries, and this year we had it set up so some families pick up their food here at our Center,” said TLC Community Center Director Angie Odom.

The Summer Food Program served an average of 78 children per day at the Center and 425 each day on the delivery routes.

As part of the program, each child received a hot meal to eat for lunch and bagged food items to eat for dinner that night and breakfast the following day. Meals were delivered five days a week during the program. Volunteers also handed out family food boxes to the families of children served by the program.

The TLC Community Center uses the Summer Food Program as a community outreach service to help meet the needs of children in the community but also as a way to share Christ’s message of salvation with the kids whom they serve.

“We always circle up and pray together before we leave to deliver the food,” Odom said. “When we get to each site we pray with the kids.”

Odom is quick to credit the community with making the program such a success each year.

“We have been so blessed that our community has continued to support this program over the years,” Odom said. “We just completed our 16th year of serving meals to kids.”

In addition to financial contributions from local churches and residents, Odom said during the course of the program hundreds of people will spend time volunteering to help prepare, package, or deliver the meals to the children.

“This year we had a lot of teens working on their Tennessee Promise hours,” Odom said. “We had a young man who just graduated high school who doesn’t have a car, but every single day he walked to the Center to volunteer. It just touches your heart to see some of the things people are willing to do so they can help others.”

Churches assisting in this year’s program included: First United Methodist, First Baptist, Central Community Christian Church, Carter Christian, Grace Baptist, Sunnyside Baptist, First Church of God, Elizabethton Alliance, Valley Forge Free Will Baptist, Lynn Valley Baptist, and First Church of God in Bristol which operated the food sites for Bristol. Local businesses Big John’s Closeouts and Chik-fil-A also served as sponsors and contributors to the program.

For more information on the TLC Community Center or the programs it provides, contact them at 423-543-4673.