HomeFront’s food pantries are desperately low and so the local non-profit agency based in Lawrenceville is urging residents to help alleviate the food shortage through a Stop Summer Hunger Now food campaign.

For some local children summer is not a time they look forward to — especially when their mothers already have trouble making their food dollars cover meals during the rest of the year. These families find it especially difficult in the summer when their kids don’t have access to nutritious school breakfasts and lunches.

“Most people think that winter is the hardest time for these families,” says Connie Mercer, HomeFront’s executive director. “During the winter, the children get subsidized breakfasts and lunches at school. During the summer, they don’t. These are families that live on the edge, economically. They can’t afford additional food and the whole family suffers. And the line at our front desk, coming to us for bags of nutritious food, gets longer and longer — and our shelves get empty, one after another. August is an especially tough month.”

“There is a day I dread,” she adds. “That is the day we run out of supplies and we have to turn hungry families and hungry children away. I can only hope that our community members, our friends, and neighbors will help us help them by donating to our food drive and will make sure that this sad day never comes.”

“Hunger isn’t just about discomfort,” she says. “It makes it hard to focus. It results in lower grades and test scores for children. It makes it hard for adults to develop job skills and get employment. It endangers the future of every member of these families. Every donated box of food is an investment in a better future.”

For more information, visit www.homefrontnj.org.