Chicago church giving away free lunches to kids this summer

CHICAGO (FOX 32 News) - School is out for the summer, but that doesn't mean kids need to worry about where to find a good meal.

And now, a local church in Chatham is giving lunch away for free.

There’s no limit on how many lunches or afternoon snacks that St. Mark Lutheran can serve. The issue has been getting the word out, so that kids know they're there.

On any given day of the week, you can find Kenata Seyenkulo tending to the kids in the day camp at this South Side Lutheran church. It’s his calling, he says. And recently, it fell on him to do more.

“We just decided we would open it up to the whole community instead of just doing it for kids at our church,” said Seyenkulo.

So, he hit the streets and the parks in his south side neighborhood with flyers offering free lunch.

“For the first week we only gave out like 6 lunches or 5 lunches. One day we gave out one lunch that day,” Seyenkulo said.

However, it was one less kid that had to worry about where to find food when school's not in session.

“Going to CPS growing up, I just know that there's a lot of people who took advantage of the breakfast program at school and lunch programs getting free lunch and during the summer that's all over,” Seyenkulo said.

With summer now winding down, Seyenkulo is stepping up his efforts to get the word out and got a big boost on Twitter Tuesday from a very familiar face: Chance the Rapper.

“Chance the Rapper did his thing. 1500 retweets from him and my little post on FB only got like 50 shares so you can see the difference with someone like him putting it out there and making it a big deal,” Seyenkulo said.

Everyone is just hoping that no kid goes hungry.

There’s no limit on how many kids the church can serve every day, as long as they prepare the night before. The free lunch is offered every weekday from 11:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. followed by a snack at 1:45 p.m.