Children's lunchbox: feeding more kids.

• Author: Hollander, Zaz

The Children's Lunchbox has operated under the radar for years, but now a growing number of families make use of the free meals provided to hungry kids in Anchorage and, more recently, the Mat-Su.

Children's Lunchbox will deliver about 200,000 meals this year through early-morning breakfast, lunch and after-school meals plus weekend meals handed off to school children on Friday afternoons. The nonprofit recently partnered with the Boys & Girls Club in Wasilla to offer meals in the Valley as well.

Program managers are hoping to increase the program's visibility in the fundraising community too.

Beans Care is the program's parent organization. Operated since 1988, Children's Lunchbox allowed Beans to expand its meal-serving programs from adults to children. But where Beans does fundraising through its dynamic development director, Ken Miller, Children's Lunchbox is just now starting to focus on expanding its public profile.

"It's been a small program for a long time ... (but) we've grown 170 percent in the last two years," says director Lynette Ortolano. "We're just kind of starting to become more significant in the community and more recognized."

Children's Lunchbox operates on a $500,000 annual budget today, Ortolano says. That number...