Angie Hughes of Life360 Named CACFP Inspire Community Award Finalist
March 31, 2022
Angie Hughes is the Regional Compliance Officer CACFP and SFSP at Life360 Community Services (LCS), an unaffiliated sponsor located in the state of Missouri, serving Missouri, Arkansas and Kansas. LCS currently has 102 sites throughout 24 communities and 67 school districts. It was able to provide over 3 million meals to those in need from March to July 2020. Since LCS began participating in CACFP and SFSP in March 2016, it has served over 9 million meals to those in need. Currently, LCS provides for 25,100 children daily. LCS operates a profoundly high-volume program, and that alone is a testament to their service to the community.
Angie has worked tirelessly through the pandemic to make sure the children of Missouri are fed. She rarely takes vacation, giving most of her time to the mission of LCS. With Angie’s help, LCS has reached the most marginalized children in often overlooked parts of Missouri, including rural areas.
Life360 Community Services impacts the lives of not only the 25,000 children it feeds daily, but the communities they serve as well. When LCS begins to serve a community, it sees that community come back to life. One day, Angie called a local school office to ask for a school calendar, and the secretary cried, saying the staff at LCS would never understand what they were doing to bring hope back to the children in their area. It’s not that LCS is simply bringing them a supper, it is also bringing hope.
This same energy was in Angie’s pandemic response strategy. She kept Life360 Community Service’s program operational throughout the crisis and improvised creative solutions along the way. Angie oversaw a partnership with an area foster care agency to coordinate a food pickup site for foster families. She arranged that LCS used YouTube to communicate with those in line for food while in line. They had greeting messages translated into ASL, Chinese, Burmese Chin, Korean and Spanish.
Angie made sure to keep the Life360 Community Services program running despite the setbacks of COVID-19. On top of that, she is a local pastor and sponsors many community events. Due in large part to her efforts, LCS was able to serve 3,074,770 meals from March to July 2020 alone. Hughes’ energy and enthusiasm paid off for thousands of Missouri children and families. Angie was a finalist for the Community Award for her dedication and service to this broad swath of people. Award winners were named during the 2022 National Child Nutrition Conference.