The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic highlighted and emphasized the critical role park and recreation professionals play in supporting access to healthy food for community members, especially during times of crisis. This Thank A Hunger Hero Day, May 7, we’re taking a moment to celebrate the essential role of park and recreation professionals.

Like all sectors, park and recreation professionals had to quickly adjust their operations, programming, practices, and policies while dealing with budgetary impacts, staffing shortages, health concerns, rapidly changing guidance and the general uncertainty of this unprecedented moment.

Throughout this past year, professionals navigated serving their community through a pandemic, working to ensure that all community members had access to healthy foods and social supports. According to Feeding America, prior to the COVID-19 pandemic over 35 million people in the U.S. lived in food insecure homes, rising to 50 million throughout 2020. To address this growing need, park and recreation professionals have implemented food access strategies that have directly benefited individuals and families.

In the City of Little Rock, Arkansas, park and recreation professionals and their partners at the Central Arkansas Library System supported community members by filling in gaps of service and providing meals on evenings and weekends – a critical time that was lacking in meal support. The feedback from their neighbors spoke for itself, as one community member shared in a letter:

“To whom this gratitude belongs ... I don't know you all nor do you all know me. But I want to say thank you for preparing and delivering the life-sustaining foods you all are a part of. You all are heroes doing what your hearts have guided you to volunteer and give to humanity. We are proud hard workers, mothers, fathers, and grandparents that have fallen on lean desperate times worldwide! Thank you for being compassionate, thank you for kindness, thank you for seeing the need and being courageous enough to put your own health in jeopardy coming out to serve. Thank you on behalf of all of the children you are helping. Thank you for showing me hope still lives.”

Agencies also stepped in to quickly provide meal support, like Berea Kids Eat in Berea, Kentucky. Here, the program unexpectedly transitioned into becoming the food service provider for the public school district. Since March 2020, Berea Kids Eat has distributed nearly 400,000 meals to 2,600 children at property shared by the public school and the parks and recreation department.

Park and recreation agencies supported community members beyond the traditional meal service as well. Throughout the pandemic, park and recreation professionals from the City of Ozark–Ozark Leisure Services, Alabama, made an intentional choice to fully support food access for their community by conducting food insecurity screenings among families who participated in meal programs. After the screenings are administered, park and recreation staff work with the local Department of Human Resources to provide enrollment assistance for SNAP benefits. In addition to this connection, they have been able to share nutritional information while providing the community with produce from their onsite garden.

And in the City of Salt Lake (Salt Lake City Corporation), Utah, when agency staff learned that Federal and State Pandemic – Electronic Benefit Transfer (P-EBT) was an available benefit of approximately $300 per child for families of children on free or reduced school lunch, staff educated and assisted community members with P-EBT eligibility and online enrollment procedures, ensuring that everyone had the opportunity to access these supports.

NRPA applauds and supports the essential role park and recreation professionals fill today and every day. Thank you to our hunger heroes! Be sure to thank your own hunger heroes on social media using #ThankAHungerHero or on No Kid Hungry’s Digital Gratitude Board.

Maureen Neumann is an NRPA Program Manager.