41.0°,
Fair Breakfast is served
Long Island Cares and Peninsula Public Library partner to feed kids
Beginning this summer, Long Island Cares has joined forces with the Peninsula Public Library in Lawrence to provide children under age 18 with a free, healthy breakfast during the week.
Rain or shine, a food truck — one of two operated by Long Island Cares — is serving about 50 children per day, including campers from the Five Towns Community Center Camp, who range in age from pre-kindergarten to fifth grade. All of the food items are kosher.
“We’re very happy with the success [of the truck],” said Carolynn Matulewicz, the library’s director.
Hauppauge-based Long Island Cares Inc., the first food bank established on Long Island, in 1980, offers a wide variety of programs aimed at providing food where and when it is needed. “The volunteers are the heart of the program,” said food truck driver Fred Kaye. On Aug. 12, volunteers Kelly Lynch and Diane and Julia Ceriello cleaned tables before and after the kids ate, sanitized their hands and distributed the breakfasts.
Jessica Rosati, chief programs officer of L.I. Cares, said that the number of children served varies from day to day, but the truck gave out a total of 321 breakfasts in July, and so far this month it has distributed another 146. Rosati explained that L.I. Cares is partnering with the library because 62 percent of children who attend classes in the Lawrence School District are eligible for free breakfasts and lunches — part of what she described as an “epidemic of suburban poverty.” “The key to any program and any service, when treating the community,” she said, “is collaboration.”
The U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service supports a summer food service program for children in need when school is not in session. The Peninsula Public Library is an approved site that is “sponsored” by Long Island Cares until Sept. 2. According to its website, the USDA will serve more than 200 million free meals to children this summer.
Because the program is federally funded, the breakfast truck follows specific guidelines when it comes to the food it serves. The menu varies, but always includes 1 percent milk (regular or chocolate); a fruit cup; and either cereal, a bagel with margarine or cream cheese, a Belvita breakfast biscuit pack or a Nutri-Grain bar.
Counters, sinks, refrigerators and freezers, fresh-water tanks, water heaters and waste tanks have been installed in L.I. Cares’ two food trucks, which have stainless steel interiors. The Rainbow truck serves Nassau County, and the Sunshine truck serves Suffolk County.
“I love it, because they look forward to coming to the library and eating breakfast,” said Sara Dominguez, a caregiver from Queens who brought her daughter, Elizabeth, 9, who loves Cheerios, and the two children she babysits, siblings James and Katherine, ages 6 and 4, who are fans of Apple Jacks and Froot Loops. James and Katherine were visiting their grandparents, who live in the Five Towns.
The breakfast truck will be at the library, at 280 Central Ave., on Aug. 19, 22, 24, 26, 29 and 31 and Sept. 2. The truck also visits New Life Ministries in Hempstead, and makes other stops as well. Breakfast is served from 9:30 to 11:30 a.m. Truck locations are posted at the beginning of each month on the Long Island Cares Facebook page, Facebook.com/LICares.
