Our Impact

A stylized graphic of a pink fruit with green leaves, showing a cross section revealing black seeds inside.

Over the past nine years, summerlunch+ has been proud to support children's health, nutrition, and learning during the summer months. What began as a small pilot has evolved into a program that now reaches hundreds of families across Ontario — helping children build food skills, confidence, and healthier futures.

Since shifting to our at-home model in 2020, we’ve been able to expand our reach and deepen our impact, offering even more families access to nourishing meals and hands-on food literacy education. Our research shows that healthy habits are formed over the 8 weeks of summer, but last far beyond the time we spend with children and their families.

As we celebrate our tenth summer, we are excited to continue growing. In summer 2025, we are on track to serve:

1,000s

children engaged in Ontario

287,000

nutritious meals & snacks served

46,000

hours of food literacy education

Over the past nine years, with the support of our partners and donors, we have achieved:

500

families across Ontario

66,000

meal servings

17,600

hours of food literacy engagement

Simple drawing of a strawberry with green leaves and a dark stem.

We are deeply grateful to everyone who has made this work possible. Thanks to your support, every summer more children and families have the opportunity to nourish themselves, learn new skills, and build a stronger foundation for the future.

To learn more about our impact, explore our detailed reports below.

Illustration of a halved avocado showing its seed and flesh, with the outer skin in green, the seed in dark green, and the flesh in light cream.
Page of an impact report titled 'summerlunch+ 2023' with a photo of children in a classroom or kitchen, raising their hands. The report discusses food program demand, community impact, and statistics of meals served and kids supported in Thorncliffe Park and Alexandra Park, with icons of a fork and a watermelon.
Report titled 'Summer Lunch+ 2024 Impact Story.' The report highlights program growth from 2023 to 2024, with details on partner organizations, families, and children served in orangeville, Toronto, and Ottawa. The visual also includes a pie chart showing the percentage of food bank visitors who are children across three years, and badges representing program partners.

Beyond Summer

Thanks to the support of our donors and partners, summerlunch+ has expanded beyond the summer months. Over the past three years, we have delivered a specialized nutrition and cooking education program for children living with Type 1 diabetes and this year, we extended the program to also reach children with Type 2 diabetes and those managing lifestyle-related conditions such as childhood obesity.

Our Research

SickKids Hospital and Toronto Metropolitan University has led clinical research to assess the impact of our virtual food skills programs for children with Type 1 Diabetes. The findings show that our program can significantly improve food literacy, cooking confidence, and nutrition behaviours among children and families.

In 2024, TMU produced a peer-reviewed paper for publication, and presented our findings at two international conferences. This study, published in the Canadian Journal of Diabetes, showed significant improvements in children's nutrition knowledge, cooking confidence, and positive attitudes toward healthy eating — critical skills for managing chronic health conditions. 

Watch Joeie Schwartz and Vanita Pals present our research findings at the International Society for Pediatric and Adolescent Diabetes 2024.