Rural Communities
Discover research, strategies and lessons learned rooted in the experience of rural people and places.
An urgent truth exists in America: children living in rural communities face a particular vulnerability to food insecurity and hunger. Rural child hunger is deeply intertwined with other social determinants, including financial insecurity, racial inequity and inadequate healthcare and transportation infrastructure. However, just as the challenges facing rural communities are interconnected, so are the solutions.
Broadly, food insecurity affects 1 in 8 children in the United States. However, food security is slightly higher in rural areas than in urban areas: 16 percent in rural areas versus 13% in urban areas in 2017. Rural communities are more likely to experience persistent poverty and have also been slower to recover from the Great Recession.
Food Insecurity in Rural Communities
Share Our Strength and Feeding America partnered with a team of researchers from six universities, led by North Carolina State University, on an in-depth qualitative study to explore what makes it easier or harder for families in rural areas to provide food for their kids. The study is the first to provide an in-depth exploration of the experiences of food insecurity in six rural counties across the United States. This qualitative study involved more than 150 interviews with families in six states. The Rural Food Insecurity Qualitative Research Brief has more information on the study design and findings.
Share Our Strength and Feeding America also published a joint report that broadly examines the overlooked crisis of children living with the threat of hunger in rural America. The Child Hunger in Rural America report includes statistics on poverty gleaned from secondary sources, highlights from our qualitative research focused on interviews with rural families, and learnings from the 2019 Rural Child Hunger Summit.
Breakfast After the Bell
Rural students often travel long distances to reach their school and don’t have access to breakfast before the school day begins. Breakfast in the classroom allows students to have breakfast together regardless of when they arrive at school.
Second Chance Breakfast
Older rural students, especially in agrarian communities, may start the school day late for a variety of reasons including working with a family business, farm, or other school or family responsibilities. Second Chance Breakfast allows these students to access breakfast later in the school day.
School Meals Resources
Mobile meals
Mobile Meals: are one solution to reaching kids who are missing out on meals during the summertime when school is out of session. Using the “mobile meals” model, sponsors use vehicles to transport and serve meals directly at apartment complexes, parks, and other locations where children spend their summer days. Mobile programs provide a hyper-local food delivery model that may be particularly useful in rural or suburban communities where distance and a lack of public transportation options are major barriers to access. As part of No Kid Hungry’s Mobile Meals Toolkit, we’ve documented three unique mobile meals models that were thoughtfully designed to meet the needs of children and families. Each one highlights a different rural community and will give you new ideas and help you to think strategically about designing a successful mobile meals program.
- Mobile Meals Toolkit: Meal Service Logistics & Best Practices
- Mobile Meals Toolkit: Partnerships and Site Selection
- Mobile Meals: Planning & Delivery Checklist
Homes as meal sites
For families to access summer meal sites, it is important that their transportation needs be front of mind. Prairie Family Center, a nonprofit in a small town in Colorado, had to get creative to increase the accessibility of their sites. Knowing that many families could not make the trip to and from town to their one summer meal site located at a school, they turned to the community itself, asking residents to open up their homes and yards as summer meal sites. While it seemed like the approach might work, placing summer meal sites in homes and yards was a radical shift from serving meals in the school cafeteria.
Out of School Time Meal Resources
Non-Congregate & "Grab & Go" Meal Service Models
School Gardens & Farm to School
School gardens and farm to school programming can improve students healthy eating habits and provide fresh local produce for school meal programs. The USDA offers farm to school grants regularly to encourage the use of gardens on school sites to establish healthy eating habits; as educational tools in the classroom; and to promote community inclusion.
Learn more about USDA's Farm to School Programming.
Local Foods
Rural schools and community providers utilize their agrarian geographies to bring local fruits, vegetables, and even meats and eggs to their meal programs. This close connection to their local farmers and ranchers has created a system that can overcome common supply chain disruptions, invest in their local economy, and create engaging educational opportunities. Rural communities create these local school food systems by partnering with local and regional businesses, buying directly from farmers, and combining meals with agricultural education.
Creative Communications
Meal service programs supporting rural communities must be creative about program promotion as they often cover large geographic areas with limited transportation and a lack of broadband infrastructure. These rural programs utilize multiple promotion strategies to be sure every community member is aware of meal service dates and times. The specific combination of promotion strategies implemented will depend on your community's preferred forms of communication.
School Food Pantries
School pantries are another resource beyond school meals to support students and families who are experiencing food insecurity. School food pantries are helpful in combination with federal nutrition programs like school meals, SNAP and WIC for ensuring students and their families have consistent access to food. There are a number of considerations that need to be made regarding launching and maintaining a pantry, with decisions centered around best serving those in need. Our Promising Practices for Starting & Maintaining a School Food Pantry resource highlights promising practices in creating and maintaining a school food pantry for students and families experiencing food insecurity. The resources details types of school pantry setups and food distribution methods; includes a checklist for starting a food pantry; spotlights from the field; and more.
Porch Visits pairs meal delivery with home visits to holistically meet families’ needs. Pilot partners in VA, WA, and CO forged innovative partnerships with community organizations to provide families with food and meals; wi-fi installation; assistance with enrollment in programs like Medicaid, WIC, and SNAP; tutoring for kids; and more. A trusted community member visited families every week, alleviating feelings of isolation and overwhelm that have been particularly difficult during Covid-19.
Innovation: Schools, nonprofits, community-based organizations, and others are constantly coming up with new ideas to reach more kids with healthy food and improve their programs. Read about the innovative work meal providers across the country are doing and be inspired to implement your own program innovations.
No Kid Hungry is working to bring together national, state, and local leaders and experts from around the country to explore disparities driving child hunger in rural communities and identify promising practices and policy levers to alleviate rural child hunger. We celebrated innovations that are user-centered and evidence-informed and fostered connections between communities of research and practice. Through these convenings, we have helped to cultivate a thriving dialogue among researchers, policymakers, and practitioners who are working to end child hunger in the rural communities they live in or serve. Much of these efforts have centered on two national convenings, which have produced a wide range of content that is available below for review.
- 2023 Rural Child Hunger Summit: On October 17-18, No Kid Hungry hosted the fifth annual Summit with co-hosts Save the Children. 2023's Summit theme was Reimaging Rural: Building Resiliency Through Partnerships and Innovation. Despite ongoing challenges, rural communities are finding innovative solutions and forming partnerships to work together and overcome obstacles in order to continue serving all families. Listen to top experts, including youth voices, as they discuss the newest research, policies, and practices aimed at addressing child hunger in rural communities. Learn about best practices, network with like-minded professionals, and collaborate on innovative strategies to end hunger for children across the country.
- 2022 Rural Child Hunger Summit: On April 27-28, No Kid Hungry partnered with Save the Children to host No Kid Hungry's fourth annual Summit. 2022's Summit theme was Reboot, Reconnect, Redesign: Creating Equitable Solutions for Rural Children. During the two-day event, speakers from all different backgrounds spotlighted their programs and how they can be replicated to overcome common rural-specific challenges.
- 2021 Rural Child Hunger Summit: On March 23-24, No Kid Hungry hosted our third annual Summit as a virtual event over Zoom. Over the course of two days, key themes explored included collaborative planning, implications of the COVID-19 pandemic on Child Nutrition policy and practice, and inequity in food systems, among many others.
- Click the link above to access session materials and recordings from this year's Summit.
- No Kid Hungry blog: 4 Takeaways from the 2021 Rural Child Hunger Summit.
- 2020 Rural Child Hunger Summit: The Summit, which took place on March 31, was originally scheduled to occur as a physical convening in Columbus, OH but was moved to a virtual platform due to the Covid-19 outbreak.
- 2019 Rural Child Hunger Summit: On March 21-22, No Kid Hungry hosted its first-ever Rural Child Summit in Louisville, Kentucky. Over the course of two days, the group focused on the latest research, policy options, and emerging innovations designed to uncover promising practices in the fight against rural child hunger.
Through the ‘Promising Practices to End Rural Child Hunger’ initiative, Share Our Strength provided grant funding to support the work of community-based organizations. In doing so, this initiative seeks to identify, document, and better understand promising practices within rural communities that achieve one or more of the following outcomes:
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Increase food security among rural children
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Increase participation in one or more of the federal Child Nutrition Programs
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Decrease stigma associated with accessing federal Child Nutrition Programs and/or additional food assistance resources
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Promoting and supporting enrollment of SNAP, WIC, and/or Pandemic - EBT programs as well as the Child Tax Credit.
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Broad-based community engagement to understand and address community needs related to child food security, as well as sustained partnerships to sustain meaningful interventions over time.
2022 cohort members include:
- Arlee Community Development Corporation, MT
- This project is a Youth Food Sovereignty initiative including leadership, entrepreneurial ventures & community projects. The community will collaborate with three organizations on a youth gardening project, including a leadership component. Community dinners led by a local Indigenous chef teaching youth & families cooking skills will incentivize family engagement.
- Center Pole, MT
- This project aims to expand traditional food knowledge by increasing local food access and community interns learning food work, repairs, growing costs, and our traditional foods project.
- Chattanooga Area Food Bank, TN
- The Chattanooga Area Food Bank will support the partners in Grundy County, TN, in implementing a food delivery model to increase child food security across the rural and persistently impoverished county. Grundy Co. partners will deliver 30 pounds of food to approximately 75 families with children each week through this model. They will also provide SNAP application assistance and food preparation and nutrition education materials at the point of delivery.
- Feeding Southwest Virginia, VA
- This project will focus on monthly meal box distributions through 4 rural VA counties (Lee, Dickenson, Grayson, and Wise).
- Foodlink, NY
- The project conducts a 10-county gap analysis of our rural food distribution services (Pop-Up Pantries). The gap analysis will include meetings with community partners and Pop-up Pantry member agencies to research further the need to develop our rural food distribution plan and create an improved map of our partnerships and service scope.
- Harvest for the Hungry, TX
- This project is creating a farm-to-school initiative with the goals of being sustainable and scalable. Plans for the project include 1) the development of networks between the H4H farm and local schools; 2) the promotion of the benefits of healthy eating, and 3) an increase in access and consumption of fruits and vegetables harvested from the H4H farm as quality school meals at no cost year-round among low-income students (K-12th grade) in rural Brazoria County, Texas.
- Literacy Coalition of South Central Arkansas, AK
- The project engages forty unemployed and under-employed single parents in six-week learning circles with their Head Start and Kindergarten age children. The curriculum will include teachings about healthy foods, food purchasing, and food preparations.
2021 cohort members included:
- Aloha Harvest, HI
- Catholic Charities of Northeast Kansa, KS
- Delta Fresh Foods Initiative, MI
- Feeding the Gulf Coast,
- Kern County Library, CA
- Kids At Their Best, CO
- Low County Food Bank, SC
- Quality Care for Children, GA
- South Eastern Housing and Development, SC