"'Back to school" may have just gotten a little bit easier for some San Diego families.
San Diego area students can now receive free meals delivered to their homes through a new partnership between DoorDash and No Kid Hungry.
The companies are working together to donate up to 100,000 deliveries via Project DASH to help schools provide food for students and bridge access to educational resources.
Schools, school nutrition services and other school-adjacent organizations can sign up for the program by completing the No Kid Hungry x Project DASH application form by Sept. 30.
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Food Insecurity in San Diego
Feeding America, the nation's largest domestic hunger-relief organization, projected 13 million U.S. children (1 in 6), may experience food insecurity this year.
In 2019, the Jacobs & Cushman San Diego Food Bank said that of San Diego County’s 3.2 million residents, 450,000 people faced food insecurity every day. Of that number, 177,000 were children. That's 1 in 5 San Diego children.
The number of children living with hunger had fallen steadily over the past decade, but the pandemic dealt a blow to progress.
The San Diego Food Bank estimates they have fed 600,000 people (adults and children) per month since March 2020. That is nearly double who they had served in 2019.
The pandemic has also presented new challenges specifically for educators, school administration, and parents as they care for students who continue to adapt to distance learning and reduced access to school-provided meals and resources they may have depended on.
Project DASH
Local
Since 2018, Project DASH has provided delivery and online ordering solutions for government and nonprofit partners, helping hundreds of food banks and food pantries serve their clients.
Through Project DASH, drivers have delivered food bank and food pantry boxes, meals, school supplies, mental health kits, home essentials and more, totaling over 900,000 deliveries and more than 15 million meals connected to people in need around the country.
For more information on the DoorDash x No Kid Hungry partnership, you can visit DoorDash's website.
