As part of its efforts to end child hunger, the Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) is studying alternative approaches to providing food assistance to children in the summer months. The 2010 Agriculture Appropriations Act (P.L. 111-80) authorized and provided funding for USDA to implement and rigorously evaluate the Summer Food for Children Demonstration, one component of which is the Summer Electronic Benefits Transfer for Children (SEBTC). 

This report describes the progress and status of the SEBTC demonstration and its evaluation in 2012, highlights the implementation experiences (through midsummer 2012) of the 10 grantees, describes the random assignment process and data collection for the evaluation, and the baseline characteristics of households in the evaluation. It also summarizes the results of the POC year (Bellotti et al., 2011; Briefel et al., 2011; Collins et al., 2012). This introductory chapter, serving as a foundation for the rest of the report, details the issue of summer food insecurity among children, describes the goals and timeline of the SEBTC demonstration and its evaluation, and provides a road map for the remainder of the report.