The first week of the Seamless Summer Program has come to a close after serving over 6,000 meals.The program, led by Linda Waters, is set to provide a seamless source of nutrition through the summer for students in the county. Ms. Waters says she started the program 5 years ago to support students of the county who still need nutritious meals while they are not in school as well as to support the community which houses around 70% free and reduced lunches.

At the central hub of the program, Gilmer Middle School, volunteers prepare and ship out meals to all program locations in the county. These locations, according to initial numbers from Ms. Waters, served approximately 656 lunches and 534 breakfasts on Monday, 723 lunches and 538 breakfasts on Tuesday, 777 lunches and 573 breakfasts on Wednesday, 641 lunches and 560 breakfasts on Thursday, and 582 lunches and 464 breakfasts on Friday. She stated the dip on Friday was most likely due to not all locations serving on Fridays.

In addition to students coming in to GMS for lunch and supporting locations across Gilmer, the GMS home-base also serves several sports camps going on this summer as the students work on the football field and track. Ms. Waters also has served visiting students from other counties to these sports camps.

The program follows rules and regulations set forth by the USDA just as they would during the school year, including the new approval to send leftovers home with students. Ms. Waters seemed especially happy with this approval stating, “I don’t like to waste food.”

The only problem, Ms. Waters said, occurred early on as she found out a week before launch that the sponsor for the Tower Road location was not able to do the program. The program wound up having to send out volunteers and staff from the home-base at GMS to the Tower Road location to cover, however, they have since relocated other volunteers to fill the location.

The menu for the summer program will continue as follows and is set to run the same menu in July.