What is the Need?

Children Are Hungry

Nearly 1 in 4 children in Washington State is at risk of going hungry. This means that thousands of local children may face the consequences of hunger and malnutrition. Children who receive inadequate nutrition suffer serious socioeconomic and health disadvantages. In comparison to well-nourished children, hungry kids tend to:

• Miss more days of school due to illness.
• Have poorer math, reading, and standardized test scores.
• Be more withdrawn or inattentive.
• Exhibit more disciplinary disorders.

The rate of children relying on free or reduced cost school lunch programs is incredibly high in our community and yet only 11% of those children have access to a summer meals program. Food Lifeline believes that each and every one of these children needs year-round access to nutritious meals to succeed in school and reach their full potential.

How Is Food Lifeline Responding?

Kids Cafe Is the Solution

The goal of the Kids Cafe program is to alleviate childhood hunger in Western Washington. We believe we can achieve this goal by removing the hurdles that keep local organizations from mounting the resources needed to run meal sites during summer, and after school snack and dinner programs during the school year.

Food Lifeline provides all the training and equipment, sources and provides the healthy snacks and meals, and even prepares and submits the paperwork required by the Federal government to meet program eligibility and cost-reimbursement standards.

What Are The Benefits?

Better Nourished Kids and a Self-Sustaining, Scalable, Efficient Program Model
Through Kids Cafe, agencies and community sites can provide hungry children with healthy snacks and meals year year-round while receiving the equipment, tools, training, and resources to build strong programs that meet the nutritional needs of healthy, growing kids.

Food Lifeline’s Kids Cafe program is self-sustaining, scalable, and replicable in any high-need area throughout Western Washington and empowers local agencies to focus on what they do best: meeting the basic needs of the children they serve. Best of all, Kids Cafe has long-term potential to engage an array of community organizations in meeting the diverse and essential needs of children in our community.

Childhood Hunger Resources

Current Kids Cafe sites:

Boys and Girls Club of Bellevue
The Club Teen Center
15228 Lake Hills Blvd
Bellevue, WA 98007

Sultan Boys and Girls Club
617 First Street Sultan, WA 98294

Volunteers of America Safe Stop
Gold Bar Elementary School (Wednesday Nights only)
401 Lewis Avenue West, Gold Bar, WA

Sultan Middle School (Saturday Nights only)
301 High Avenue, Sultan, Washington 98294

Find a meal site near you:

For More Information

Email Food Lifeline

Watch our video on childhood hunger in Western Washington

View Childhood Hunger Regional Data: Map the Meal Gap

Kids Cafe is made possible by generous support from Regence BlueShield of Washington and ConAgra.