northhillscares Announcements, NHC in the News!, Summer Lunch Program

Read-a-Thon 2024!

Dear Friends of North Hills Cares and Fellow Readers:
We are celebrating an incredible milestone this summer! Sometime in late July, our free summer lunch program for kids will serve our 50,000th meal!

Our volunteer staff and the families we serve are working together to mark the occasion by pledging to read 50,000 combined minutes by the end of the summer. The kids are excited and are reading every day, but 50,000 minutes is an ambitious goal. To make sure we get there, we are asking supporters like you to donate your summer reading minutes to our total.

All you need to do is reply to an email once a week with the estimated number of minutes you spent reading for pleasure in the last seven days. You can count minutes you read on your own, read to others, listened to someone read aloud or listened to an audiobook. Each week the kids will add your minutes to our total and color the giant graph at our West View location showing us moving toward our goal. We will keep you updated on our progress.

Are you ready? If you’d like to be added to the email list where you can reply to weekly emails with the number of minutes you spent reading, just send an email to Sciulli.Lynne@gmail.com to let her know that you want to join in the fun! That’s all there is to it!

Thank you and happy summer reading from North Hills Cares

northhillscares Awards & Recognitions, Summer Lunch Program

NHC Presented with NATIONAL Gold Award! | USDA’s 2023 Turnip the Beet Award

North Hills Cares is honored to have been awarded a gold level recognition from the USDA’s national program Turnip the Beet. In 2022, we received a silver award for our lunch program. Thanks to our hard-working board members and volunteers, we advanced to the gold award for the 2023 program year!

The Turnip the Beet Award recognizes outstanding summer meal program sponsors across the nation who work hard to offer high quality meals to children that are appetizing, appealing, and nutritious during the summer months.

The USDA’s Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) recognized 140 summer meal sponsors across the country with Turnip the Beet awards for excellence in program year 2023:
– 55 sponsors qualified for a gold award
– 67 qualified for a silver award
– 18 qualified for a bronze award

Only FIFTY-FIVE gold awards were given across the United States. North Hills Cares was one of TWO sponsors recognized with gold awards in Pennsylvania.

This award is given based on quality. We pride ourselves on our high quality meal program, and we know that it wouldn’t be possible without all of our volunteers. THANK YOU for helping us exceed expectations and give all children the kind of meals they deserve.

Additionally, the incredible meals we offer at our lunch program wouldn’t be what they are if it weren’t for Beth McIntyre, the summer lunch program manager, and Patty Parkhill. Beth and Patty work tirelessly to create menus that meet all necessary requirements and then some. All of the shopping, planning, decision-making, and brilliant ideas for the summer menus are thanks to Beth and Patty’s endless dedication to our mission. THANK YOU.

Thank you to FNS for this honor!

→ Read more about Turnip the Beet here: https://www.fns.usda.gov/sfsp/turnip-the-beet