LEBANON — The Lebanon Public Library provides myriad services for Upper Valley residents from craft groups to concerts to free internet access.

This summer, they’re adding another function: a site for caregivers to pick up five days’ worth of breakfast and lunch food to feed their children during the summer.

“There are enough barriers between children and nutrition that anything we can do to welcome access and nutrition, the library is happy to do,” Celeste Pfeiffer, an outreach librarian, said.

During the first week, they ran out of the 20 meals they had within minutes and volunteers with the Hartford Community Coalition, which works with the New Hampshire Food Bank to provide food for the meal site, had to deliver more.

“It’s an obvious need of the community and people are ready to chow down,” Pfeiffer said.

The demand is indicative of the food insecurity social service providers contend with in the Upper Valley. During much of the year, most children have access to two meals a day at school. In summer, school districts and nonprofit organizations try to be proactive about connecting with families who might struggle to afford enough groceries to last the week.

While the United States Department of Agriculture provides funding in districts that have at least 50% of students enrolled in free and reduced lunch programs, meal providers acknowledge that current programs are not sufficient to reach every family in need. That doesn’t stop them from trying by providing food-kit sites, in addition to freshly prepared meals.

The Hartford Community Coalition delivers the meals to the Lebanon Public Library, along with other locations in Hartford and Lebanon including schools, summer camps and apartment complexes. The nonprofit organization started providing summer meals for around nine weeks each summer in 2016, and its number of recipients has grown nearly every year since, according to Executive Director Emily Zanleoni.

Hartford High School and White River School are “open sites” which means more than 50% of enrolled students are on free and reduced lunch; any resident, regardless of where they live in Hartford, can pick up meals from 11:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Tuesdays at the White River School and 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. Thursdays at Hartford High School. Volunteers only ask how many kids patrons have and if they plan on returning in the future, so that they can prepare enough for the following weeks.

While the program assists families, its hours can make it tricky for parents who work during the middle of the day to come and pick up food.

While funding is provided by the state through the USDA, it is through a reimbursement model, meaning HCC has to come up with the food first. As a result, HCC must raise around $5,000 to $7,500 through grants and donations for the summer meals program.

“That’s a lot of running to catch up all the time,” Zanleoni said.

Last year, Vermont approved a universal free meal program, which provides free meals to children in schools regardless of income level. That does not carry over to the summer meals program, meaning families must still fill out paperwork to demonstrate eligibility.

This summer, the White River Valley Supervisory Union — which includes the Upper Valley towns of Bethel, Chelsea, Royalton, Sharon, Strafford and Tunbridge — expanded its meal program to include take-home, seven-day breakfast-and-lunch meal kits, in addition to weekend meal bags prepared for students enrolled in summer camp programs run at the supervisory union’s schools.

“There’s a whole package of deli meat. There’s a whole package of cheese. Cereal, peanut butter, yogurt. Fresh produce,” said Mischa Johnson, food service director for the supervisory union’s Child Nutrition Program.

The program operates five “open sites” in areas that meet the 50% free and reduced lunch threshold, including in Bethel and South Royalton, where families can come by for meals.

“The kids that rely on breakfast and lunch during the school year, it bridges that gap for sure,” Johnson said.

In one week alone this summer, the program provided around 400 breakfasts and 600 lunches to kids enrolled in camps, passed out 143 weekend meal bags and 36 seven-day meal kits.

They’ve also started preparing meals for a new site in West Fairlee, which is part of the Rivendell Interstate School District, after Hunger Free Vermont, a nonprofit organization that helps coordinate summer programs, asked White River Valley if it could add another site.

School districts and regions that do not make the 50% threshold have fewer options. The Mascoma Valley Regional School District ran its Seamless Summer Program from 2017 to 2023 to provide meals to students, Business Administrator Michelle Lockwood said.

“The state raised the qualification requirements and the district towns are not over 50%,” Lockwood wrote in an email, adding that the district sits at just under 28%.

In the few years after the COVID-19 pandemic began, more funding was available for summer meal programs.

“This absolutely helped districts feed more children,” Lockwood wrote. “Unfortunately, the state is not emulating what (Maine, Massachusetts and Vermont) are doing to feed all kids for free.”

Like Mascoma, the Plainfield and Cornish school districts do not meet the 50% threshold, Superintendent Sydney Leggett said.

Instead, they recommend families reach out to the Claremont Soup Kitchen which uses private funds to provide free lunch to kids from noon to 1 p.m. on weekdays at the soup kitchen, 135 Maple Ave., as well as Veterans Park, Monadnock Park and Barnes Park.

In order to qualify for USDA meal programs, families are required to fill out paperwork that shows their financial need.

“A lot of families are reluctant to fill it out because there’s an issue of pride, of wanting to be able to handle the situation on their own and maybe not wanting to involve the school in anything that’s going on financially at home,” Leggett said. “We know for a fact that there are families who would qualify that don’t fill out the paperwork for those reasons.”

It can also be complicated to fill out, Leggett added. While larger districts have social workers who can assist families, that’s not the case for Cornish and Plainfield.

“Smaller rural districts don’t have access to the additional supports,” Leggett said.

While there are area food pantries that provide food to families, they’re not coordinated like structured summer meal programs. In the two weeks after the Upper Valley Haven reopened its newly renovated food pantry, they’ve had an average of 86 households per day, when previous highs have been in the 70s, said Jennifer Fontaine, director of the Haven’s finance and food programs.

“We’re definitely seeing more people, more new households,” Fontaine said. The Haven defines a new household as one that hasn’t visited the food pantry in the last three years. “Anecdotally I’d say yes part of it has to do with school being out.” She added that more people are asking for snacks, which is usually indicative of having children in a household.

“There’s been great strides in works on food security but there’s still many more steps to go,” Fontaine said. “I think summer meals are a piece of that. We need more communities offering summer meals.”

Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.