Here’s a number to chew on: 100,000.
That’s how many $5 meal cards Atlanta nonprofit Street Charity wants to fund before the year runs out. Hit the goal, and 20,000 Atlanta kids get five meals apiece while school’s out for the holidays.
The timing isn’t an accident.
When classrooms close for Thanksgiving and Christmas, thousands of local children lose the free and reduced-price school meals their families count on. The cafeteria goes dark, and the grocery bill goes up. And with SNAP cuts now reaching more than 100,000 Georgians, more families are feeling the squeeze this year.
Street Charity’s fix is refreshingly simple. Each card carries $5 that works at nearly any fast-food restaurant. Families pick the spot, pick the meal and eat. No forms, no lines, no awkward handoff.
The idea came from a Buckhead couple, John and Antuanette Patton, who kept running into hungry people on Atlanta streets and wanted a better answer than spare change.
“We knew that giving them dollar bills was not the answer,” John Patton told Channel 2.
So they built a card that can only buy food. It runs on the Discover network, and if a card goes unused, the money gets donated to food banks. Either way, somebody eats.
The cards started as a way to help Atlanta’s unhoused neighbors. Now the Pattons are aiming them at kids who’d otherwise go hungry over the break.
Want to chip in? Head to streetcharity.org. Donors can hand out cards themselves or let Street Charity get them where they’re needed.
Five dollars won’t fix everything. But for a kid on winter break, it’s lunch.
