There’s a new Lunch Lizard ready to hit the streets, and this one started life as a mini school bus.

The newly retrofitted Lunch Lizard will help bring nutritious meals directly to children and families across Mesa County during the summer months. The Lunch Lizard food trucks also stay busy during the school year, providing about 1,000 meals each day to District 51 schools without kitchens.

The Lunch Lizard Summer Mobile Meal Program began in 2015 as a partnership between Western Colorado Community Foundation and Mesa County Valley School District 51. The idea was simple: if kids couldn’t always get to a meal site during the summer, bring the meals to them.

WCCF President & CEO Anne Wenzel helped champion the program from its early days, working alongside District 51 and community partners to turn that idea into a mobile meal program that has since gained statewide and national recognition.

More than a decade later, Lunch Lizard continues to reach children from Fruita to Clifton. This summer marked the program’s 12th year of serving free meals to children and teens ages 0–18.

WCCF provided a $150,000 grant to purchase and retrofit the newest Lunch Lizard, building on years of investment from WCCF donors and community members. Since the program began, more than $600,000 has been raised through WCCF to help build the Lunch Lizard fleet and strengthen efforts to address childhood hunger in Mesa County.

“Thank you WCCF and the GJ community for the amazing support to the statewide and nationally recognized D51 Lunch Lizard childhood hunger program. Since 2015, WCCF donors and community members have raised over $600,000, providing a fleet of Lunch Lizard food trucks!”

– Dan Sharp, D51 Director of Food and Nutrition Services

Lunch Lizard is one piece of WCCF’s broader Hunger Relief Initiative, which brings together funding, partnerships and community leadership to help make sure our neighbors across western Colorado have access to nutritious food.

The newest Lunch Lizard is ready to roll, carrying forward more than a decade of partnership and a simple idea that continues to make a difference: meet kids where they are.