Run For Good

The Children’s Lunchbox

In 1998 Bean’s Cafe board members realized that many of the poorest children in our community are at risk of not having their daily nutritional needs met. While hunger affects people of all ages, it is particularly devastating for children. Even short-term episodes of hunger can cause lasting damage to a child’s development, putting children at risk for a range of cognitive, behavioral, emotional, and physical problems. When children receive the nutrition they need, they are more likely to move out of poverty as adults. This sparked a vision of “prevention” and Kids Cafe became a program of Bean’s Cafe.

In 2004, Bean’s Cafe renamed Kid’s Cafe to The Children’s Lunchbox as what started as a few hundred meals a month being delivered to a few programs quickly turned into a few hundred meals a day. The addition of summer food programs as well as weekend food and pantry programs has strengthened the work to assure no child is hungry.

Fast forward to 2022 and The Children’s Lunchbox’s largest program, the pantry pack program is providing thousands of meals a week, via a mobile food distribution model, to children and families throughout Anchorage. Since March 2020, when the program changed and grew to accommodate families, the program has provided more than 500,000 meals to hungry children and families in Anchorage who otherwise are not certain of where their next meal might come from.