Find Meals for School-Aged Youth

Millions of school-aged children in the US rely on free or reduced-price meals during the academic year. Students can easily access these meals at more than 90,000 public schools across the country. But when schools close for the summer, the availability of meals and ease of access to them changes. The USDA’s Summer Food Service Program offers free meals at over 35,000 sites nationwide during the summer months but, its impact is hampered by often outdated information that reaches families in need—with only an estimated 16% of food insecure youth accessing the program’s meal sites.

The Solution

Each summer, neighborhood meal sites close, change location, or have inconsistent open and closed times throughout the summer months. Managing those details and finding up-to-date, real-time meal site information can be difficult for families already experiencing vulnerability and limits the number of children who access this vital resource.

Range is a free mobile app that helps families and those who support them to easily find and share the up-to-date location of summer meal sites. It uses location-based technology, eliminating the need for addresses or zip codes, making it simple for anyone to find nearby sites.

Range was initially funded by a grant from Microsoft and built with the support of volunteer developers.

Over the years, Caravan Studios, a division of TechSoup and the team behind Range, maintained and promoted the product, which was used and shared by thousands of school districts, PTAs, youth groups, and libraries. However, without dedicated funding or a monetized model associated with it, Caravan Studios could not upgrade Range to take advantage of newer technology or support more than ad hoc outreach efforts. For those reasons, they chose to retire the product in 2024. But the need for this resource and the community support for its approach still remain and will likely increase in years ahead.

Range has been downloaded thousands of times and used in all 50 states. Interviews report that many of those downloads were with people who connected families and young people with meals, thereby creating a larger vector of support. It has been instrumental in connecting vulnerable children with summer meal sites, helping to alleviate food insecurity during the summer months–connecting kids and their families nationwide with real-time, localized information on how and when to find summer meal sites.

Our Call to Action

Your investment in Range is an investment in the fight against childhood hunger. Join us in ensuring that every child has access to nutritious meals, regardless of whether school is in session.

We are seeking to raise a $750,000 endowment that will support Range in perpetuity. This endowment will enable us to:

• Ensure the long-term sustainability of Range, providing a vital lifeline for vulnerable children.
• Develop a new version of the app to take advantage of modern technology.
• Create regular reporting to help inform future investments in summer meal programs.

Please note: TechSoup’s Board of Directors has the flexibility to direct the endowment distribution to other programs addressing hunger in future.