For millions of families across America, putting food on the table has become an increasingly difficult balancing act. As rising costs continue to strain household budgets in 2026, the need to ensure every child has access to three meals a day has become urgent, and No Kid Hungry is meeting it head on.
Nearly 83% of families with low incomes say rising food costs due to inflation have made it difficult for them to buy all the food they usually would, according to a national survey commissioned by No Kid Hungry.
These survey findings underscore the critical role of free and reduced-price school meals and other federal nutrition programs like SNAP, our nation's most powerful anti-hunger program, to help families make ends meet and ensure their kids have the healthy meals they need to thrive.
In response, No Kid Hungry has increased our investment in and advocacy for communities and organizations who are diligently working to help keep kids and families fed in 2026.
As we look back at this year's top stories, we're celebrating the dedicated partners and community leaders whose work is expanding our impact and bringing us closer to ending childhood hunger for good.
Setting The Stage: Who We're Fighting For
Although proponents of last year's SNAP cuts argued they would make the program more efficient, incentivize people to work and help balance our nation's budget, the reality is completely different.
Over the past year, we've traveled across the country to see how working families are being impacted by the new SNAP requirements. We learned that accidents, changes with work and rising prices are part of life, and SNAP exists so kids and families don't go hungry during unexpected hardship.
Yet, many parents are now skipping meals so their kids can eat without the safety net SNAP provides. They're also buying less nutritious food to stretch their budgets and many kids are not getting enough nutrition to thrive in sports and school as a result.
Sierra, a single mom from Hastings, Nebraska is a strong advocate for SNAP because she relied on the program earlier in her life during a difficult pregnancy. It ensured she could put food on the table for her kids while taking care of her health.
She urges elected officials to go into the communities to see the reality of hunger in America for themselves before continuing to make cuts to SNAP.
"For the elected officials wanting to cut SNAP, I would say go and speak to the community, to the kids," Sierra shared. "This is something that people need. Our country is only as great as how we care for our most vulnerable."
The following partnerships and community investments reflect No Kid Hungry's intentional efforts to bridge the significant gap left when families are left without SNAP benefits under the new federal regulations.
Candy Biehle: Grab-and-Go Summer Meals in Smithville, TX
Community leader Candy Biehle expanded the summer meals program in Smithville, Texas to include grab-and-go options so less kids go hungry in the summer.
Traditional summer meals programs often require families to travel to a specific location at a set time. But limited transportation and long distances to distribution centers in Smithville creates a significant barrier for families to get the meals they need every day.
Biehle, the district's child nutrition director, said expanding the summer meals program to include grab-and-go options allows families to pick up several days' worth of meals at once, which reduces the need to travel to a distribution site every day.
"Once we began doing the grab-and-go, I don't have to worry about a child inside a house without food," Biehle explains. "I know they have food."
No Kid Hungry continues to support local solutions that help more families access nutritious meals when school is out, such as grab-and-go summer meals and Summer-EBT. Leaders like Biehle and her team work every day to address summer hunger, and our continued support and advocacy is essential to sustaining their efforts.
Amazon: Piloting Summer Meal Delivery Alternatives
Corporate and community partnerships facilitated by No Kid Hungry can also help rural areas overcome transportation barriers and expand access to summer meals for kids across the country.
For instance, No Kid Hungry's summer home delivery pilot with Amazon delivered 2 million meals to children and families through 18 sponsors in 13 states this year.
The pilot program is now in its second year of operation and is built on from a 2023 expansion of the federal summer meals program that allows schools and community organizations to serve children in rural areas through meal pickup and delivery, rather than requiring them to eat at a designated site.
In Wisconsin, Marinette County was among eight counties to implement summer non-congregate meal programs using the Amazon pilot program for the first time.
Kerri Oratch, Marinette County's School Nutrition Director, shared that the pilot program changed everything about how the county approached summer meals distribution.
"It was too good to be true," Oratch said, describing the phone call from the Department of Public Instruction (DPI) asking if they'd be interested in participating in the pilot.
In rural Wisconsin, these programs make a significant difference in ensuring children have access to meals when school is out, an area No Kid Hungry will always seek to innovate in the years to come.
LIFT: Empowering Moms To Raise Empowered Kids
Giselli Veloz won the inaugural "Rock Star Mom" honor at the National Mother's Day Committee's 48th Annual Outstanding Mother Awards. In a special collaboration, No Kid Hungry helped select Veloz for the award.
Veloz won this award because of her success in the LIFT program, a national nonprofit organization that provides one-on-one coaching to parents of children ages eight and under to help them set and achieve goals around their careers, finances and education.
After enrolling in the program, Veloz completed her associates, bachelors and her two masters degrees while continuing to support her sons, Gianni and Ryan. Upon completion of the program, she became a certified powerhouse, landing a position as senior program manager at LIFT and is currently an adjunct lecturer at CUNY.
When explaining her professional development through LIFT, Veloz says she's come full circle and hopes "to continue to empower families, encourage families and invest in families so that they can also persevere, be resilient and achieve their success and break cycles."
By investing in mothers like Veloz, communities across the United States can dismantle the cycles of poverty that drive childhood hunger. Her story is one of the many reasons why No Kid Hungry continues to invest in moms, because when moms do well, their children have access to the food they need to thrive.
Our partnerships in 2026 have shown us that when we combine our strengths, we can truly create the change we wish to see. But, there is still a tremendous opportunity to deepen our impact and build a future where every kid and family has the opportunity to have a full belly all year long.
When looking ahead to 2027, and the years to come, No Kid Hungry's CEO Anne Filipic sums it up our initiative best:
"We've built incredible partnerships, we've learned from hard-fought victories, and we've become stronger because of them," Filipic explains. "This isn't the moment to rest on what we've accomplished. It's the moment to ask what more we can do."
