MARIETTA — A campaign to combat hunger among children announced three local entities received funding to help provide summer meals in rural communities.

No Kid Hungry Ohio awarded a combined $137,780 in summer meal grants to 10 organizations around the state. Locally, recipients included Washington-Morgan Community Action, Caldwell Exempted Village Schools and Noble Local Schools.

A release from No Kid Hungry Ohio notes that when schools close for summer, some children may find themselves without access to the reliable nutritional meals they receive in the fall, winter and spring. One in five Ohio children experience food insecurity and may face “the hungriest season of the year during the summer months,” the release says.

Rural communities face particular challenges with regard to summer meal programs, such as transportation issues, work schedules and extreme weather. Traditional summer meal programs only reach a fraction of eligible children, the release says.

No Kid Hungry provides funding to support programs that make meals more accessible by delivering food to children or allowing parents to pick up meals at a central location, often for multiple days at a time, and take them home, the release says.

“The tremendous growth in summer meal programs across the state since the non-congregate option became available shows that Ohio families have embraced its flexibility. As a result, summer meals are reaching more Ohio kids than ever before,” Allison Dela Cuesta, associate director of No Kid Hungry, said in the release.

Summer meal sites for children 18 and younger can be found online at NoKidHungry.org/Help or /Ayuda.

No Kid Hungry is a national campaign of Share Our Strength, an organization whose goal is to end poverty and hunger.