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The Greater Boston Food Bank's Kids Cafe program provides 1,700 meals a day to at-risk children in Boys & Girls Clubs throughout eastern Massachusetts. They are located in safe, convenient environments, and most of the children arrive by bike or on foot with friends.
How it works
Kids Cafe chefs create menus using products from The Food Bank's inventory and a "wish list" of desired items. The Food Bank delivers this food—including supplemental purchases of items not in inventory—to each Club once a week. Clubs serve dinner an average of five nights a week during the school year; during the summer, they switch, serving breakfast and lunch to replace the free or reduced-price school meals that children no longer receive when school isn't in session. Whatever the meal, thousands of children a day depend on the safe, comfortable, clean setting the Kids Cafes deliver.
To see a video portrayal of our Kids Cafes, click here
Patriots Kids Cafes
The New England Patriots Charitable Foundation and the Kraft family have partnered with The Greater Boston Food Bank to expand the Kids Cafe program. The purpose of the Patriots Kids Cafes, in partnership with The Greater Boston Food Bank and Feeding America - located within area Boys and Girls Clubs, is to provide hot meals for underprivileged children who may not receive one at home. Many times this is the only hot meal the child receives the entire day.
The Patriots Kids Cafes currently provide children with 160,000 meals per year at seven locations:
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Other Kids Cafes
We also currently partner with two other Boys & Girls Clubs:
Nutrition
Kids Cafes have also become a place to learn— about food, about healthy eating, about making smart choices to provide more energy and healthier, longer lives. Our nutrition team takes an interactive, energized approach to making healthy eating interesting and easy, with six- to eight-week programs like Snack Attack, Eat Fit , and Rainbow Buffet. They offer programs that teach the connection between healthy foods and healthy, active minds and bodies, focusing on the importance of eating a variety of foods, the benefits of whole grains, and the importance of key vitamins and minerals. The kids even make smart snacks and meals together and are given a "take home" bag with child-friendly recipes, to encourage caregivers to continue the teaching and learning process. Through the Kids Cafe's interactive and hands-on nutrition programs, children come to understand food in a new way as they learn how what they eat now affects their health today and in the future.
Heros Club
The Kids Cafe Heroes Club celebrates those businesses that consistently go above and beyond in generosity of time, food, and spirit. These companies include Garelick Farms, American Pride Seafoods, Mama Rosie's and Olivia's Organics.
Contact programs@gbfb.org or 617-427-5200 to learn more about Kids Cafe.
Kids Cafe is a registered trademark of Feeding America and is used under license.
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"The program is great—it makes kids look forward to coming to dinner. Serving dinner allows us to interact and check in with the kids on a daily basis. We cook a lot of food!"
- Jenny Molina—
Kids Cafe participant and chef's helper at the Gerald and Darlene Jordan Boys & Girls Club in Chelsea
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