Summer Lunch at the Park opens June 10, 2024, to serve free healthy meals to kids and families. Cold lunches are served Monday-Thursday, 11:40 am – 12:40 pm at the Welsh Park shelter, 651 Russell Road, DeKalb. 

Lunch is open to all children & families in the community. Meals are provided as a ministry of First United Methodist Church of DeKalb in partnership with Northern IL Food Bank and generous donors to Summer Lunch through Give DeKalb County.

Summer Lunch at the Park is a way to close some of the summer meal gap for the 4,000 low-income children in DeKalb when school is not in session. Nearly 1/3 of DeKalb’s school children live within 1 mile of the Welsh Park lunch site.

Unique to this program are meals provided for parents and guardians. Thousands of meals are served at this site each summer to children and families and to kids attending Camp Power through our partnership with the YMCA. Since its inception in 2012, nearly 40,000 summer meals have been served to kids and their families through Summer Lunch.

For more information about Summer Lunch, contact the church office M-F, 8 am – 1pm, at 815-756-6301.