Creating a Food Secure Future for All Vermont’s Children by 2035
Prepared in January 2025 by Hunger Free Vermont in collaboration with Vermont Foodbank and Feeding Champlain Valley.
Two Thirds of Vermont Children Are At Risk of Hunger
We envision a future where every child—and every family raising children—is food secure. For many children in Vermont, food security is out of reach, putting their development and future at risk.
In 2025, approximately 79,000 Vermont children, about ⅔ of all kids in the state, were at risk of hunger because they live in households not able to afford all their basic needs.
In collaboration with nearly 100 stakeholders, we have identified the following 14 strategies as central levers for creating a food secure future for all Vermont's children. Committed action toward fulfilling these initiatives will immediately help build a better future for Vermont children; one where kids have the food they need to live, learn, and play in their home and care or education setting, and where families are freed from the terrible stress of worrying about how to adequately nourish their children.
I. Strategies for ensuring food security for children at home
Expand efforts to reach Vermont’s lowest-income families with dignified and convenient access to food through the charitable food system.
Connect more low-income families with 3SquaresVT by ensuring every eligible family in Vermont has the information and support they need to enroll.
Pass legislation to improve the adequacy of Reach Up payments to the lowest income single parent households.
Expand Non-congregate Summer Meals.
Build a successful, permanent Summer EBT program.
Leverage Healthcare to Recognize and Alleviate Food Insecurity.
II. Strategies for Feeding children in education and care settings
Continue and expand Vermont’s Universal School Meals Program.
Make CACFP fully functional for Early Childhood Education programs.
Expand afterschool and summer meals.
Build robust training and education for Child Nutrition Programs.
Invest in the Child Nutrition Program workforce.
Eliminate structural barriers to school meal programs.
Provide accessible, culturally, and religiously responsive meals in Child Nutrition Programs.
Invest in Farm to School & Early Childhood.
This strategic plan outlines the current progress of each of the outlined strategies, as well as the organizations and agencies who will be responsible for implementing the action steps identified for each strategy.
If you have any questions, please contact
Keely Agan
Child Nutrition Policy Lead, Hunger Free Vermont
kagan@hungerfreevt.org
Connection to 2022 Providing Meals in Early Childhood Settings report
In 2022 we published a report about the barriers, successes, costs, and needs of early childhood education programs currently providing or wanting to provide meals to their students. You can access that report here:
Appendix A of Creating a Food Secure Future for All Vermont’s Children by 2035 (pages 49–63) outlines the longitudinal follow-up to our 2022 report. In 2024 we interviewed 26 early childhood educators from across the state, asking the same questions as our 2022 focus group study, to uncover any changes and highlight the most updated feedback as we embarked on building out the early childhood section of our current strategic plan.
In tandem with our 2024 updated focus group data, we worked with the Vermont Farm to Early Childhood Coalition, Nemours, and Child Care Aware of America to update the CACFP Participation Map tool that was originally released in 2022. This is a great quantitative data tool that, when combined with the qualitative data of our focus group report, demonstrates trends in Child and Adult Care Food Program participation in Vermont.