ORANGE COUNTY, N.C. — A benefit that has helped 1.6 million North Carolina children is coming to an end.

After three years, the temporary Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) program will end on May 11. This benefit gave eligible students $8 in food assistance for each day of school missed because of COVID-19.

Soon, families that have relied on this help may find themselves looking for other resources.

What You Need To Know

  • After three years, the temporary Pandemic EBT (P-EBT) program will end on May 11

  • This benefit gave eligible students $8 in food assistance for each day of school missed because of COVID-19

  • Families have until May 1 to apply for food stamps for free-reduced price meals at their child’s school in order to get a final one-time $120 summer P-EBT payment

  • One Orange County nonprofit says, as these pandemic benefits end, its food program waitlist is growing

Every week, dozens of volunteers with TABLE, hand deliver bags of nutritious food to more than 800 kids across Orange County.

“This week, there's pasta, beans. There's always snacks, and they're also getting some milk this week,” said Suzanne Tormollen, the director of marketing at TABLE.

Increasing access to healthy food is the core of TABLE’s mission, a nonprofit that started in 2008 feeding just 12 kids.

“So a lot of people ask, ‘Why? What is the need?’ And there are actually 7,000 kids in Orange County that are on free and reduced meals so we can consider those children food insecure,” Tormollen said.

While the nonprofit serves about 800 students a week, Tormollen says there are many more looking for help.

“Currently as of this week, we have 78 children on our waitlist, and we are serving over 800. We cannot serve any more children out of our current space. We only have 1,900 square feet,” Tormollen said.

Tormollen says that waitlist has only grown as COVID-19 related food assistance comes to an end, including the P-EBT program which stops on May 11.

“We can't directly correlate the two, but it has been interesting that we started our waitlist once these benefits started to expire. And every day we were getting calls from more families who want to apply for our program,” Tormollen said. “A couple of months ago, emergency SNAP benefits were expired for a lot of the families in our community. This meant that families who were receiving anywhere from maybe $95 to $325 a month were losing those additional funds. Now we're starting to face that as of May 11, the P-EBT benefits will be expiring.”

As those programs expire, Tormollen feels confident that TABLE and other nonprofits will do all they can to support families who need help because she’s seen the difference it can make.

“We do need to continue providing these services to help our community, to help them, especially the children, so they can go to school, and they can learn and grow and play and all the things that they deserve access to,” Tormollen said.

TABLE is preparing to move to a much larger space, which will allow it to serve more kids across Orange County, but it relies on anywhere from 100 to 150 volunteers a week as well as financial donations.

To learn more about helping TABLE or how to receive help from the organization, visit TABLE’s website.

As for the P-EBT deadline, the date to keep in mind is May 1. Families can apply for food stamps or free-reduced price meals at their child’s school before then. If they qualify, students will get a one-time summer payment of $120. This will be the final benefit as the P-EBT program ends.