Richard Comeau is the chief program officer at Hunger Free Oklahoma, a nonprofit working to ensure every Oklahoman has enough nutritious food every day. Here, he shares the work his organization and three Tribal Nations are doing to expand Summer EBT access, a program the state has declined for the second year in a row, leaving 300,000 of Oklahoma's children at high risk for food insecurity over the summer months. 

In mid-June 2024, I received a call on my work cell phone. The caller, Judy, was excited to use her Summer Electronic Benefits (Summer EBT) card at the grocery store. The benefit provides eligible school-aged students with $120 on an EBT card (like a debit card) for food during the summer to supplement school lunches and breakfasts that they would normally receive for free or reduced prices.

There was a problem, though: Judy did not know how to use it. Previous Pandemic EBT cards had been on a SNAP model, meaning she could use her card to purchase any food item at her grocery store. This Summer EBT card was based on the Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) program, meaning she had to purchase from a list of eligible items. Even more confusing, during the pandemic, she received a card directly from the state of Oklahoma. This year, she received a card from the Chickasaw Nation even though she was not a Tribal citizen.
That was the first call of hundreds I received over the summer. It represented a tiny fraction of the more than 20,000 calls Hunger Free Oklahoma would field.

Childhood food insecurity in Oklahoma

Hunger Free Oklahoma was founded in 2016 to be a voice for people experiencing food insecurity, to be a statewide coordinator and convener, to provide technical assistance and best practices for hunger relief, and to advocate for necessary change to reverse Oklahoma’s staggering food insecurity statistics.

In Oklahoma, one in four children and one in six households experience food insecurity. Nearly a quarter of all people in Oklahoma participated in SNAP at some point during 2023, while 64 percent of school children in Oklahoma receive free or reduced-price meals.

To make sustainable change, Hunger Free Oklahoma relies on one core value: collaboration. This can look like collective impact partnerships, such as the Oklahoma Childhood Food Security Coalition, or filling critical gaps to build Oklahoma’s capacity, like the SNAP Community Partner Network.

While these programs meet immediate needs for the families we serve, they also create long-lasting partnerships and crucial capacity for state agencies, nonprofits, schools, and Tribal governments. The result is a more collaborative, efficient ecosystem that gets results.

• Estimated SNAP participation among eligible individuals increased from 85 percent to 95 percent from 2017 to 2023.
• Over 40,000 Oklahomans participated in Double Up Oklahoma in the last quarter of 2024, increasing fruit and vegetable purchases by more than 100 percent at participating stores.
• More than one million additional summer meals were served from 2023 to 2024, continuing a trend of increased summer meals participation since 2017.

Summer EBT in Oklahoma: An ongoing story

Back to that first call: Judy was at the store and didn’t have time for a lengthy explanation, so I kept it brief.
In 2024, the state of Oklahoma opted out of participating in Summer EBT. However, the Chickasaw and Cherokee Nations had been operating the program as pilots for years. They partnered with the Muscogee (Creek) Nation and Hunger Free Oklahoma to offer the program in Eastern Oklahoma so that as many kids as possible could benefit. So even though Judy wasn’t a Tribal citizen and didn’t live in Chickasaw Nation, her children still qualified.
She would have to look for WIC shelf tags and use her WIC shopper app to see her eligible items. It wouldn’t be as simple as SNAP, but she could still provide her family with nutritious food for the summer. If she needed more help, she could call the Summer EBT Helpline, and a Hunger Free Oklahoma employee could help her navigate the program.

As Chief Program Officer at Hunger Free Oklahoma, I have the joy of working with a passionate and creative team to build partnerships, strategically address program barriers, fill gaps to build capacity, and work with program administrators to innovate systems. Oklahoma's 2024 Summer EBT program demonstrates how compassionate and forward-looking government leaders can collaborate to provide meaningful benefits, focusing on the end-user: children and families in need.

Hunger Free Oklahoma’s role in the 2024 Summer EBT program was aligned with our mission and approach. We identified a problem: The state opted out of Summer EBT, leaving more than 300,000 children without access to the benefit. We identified stakeholders with the power to do something about it: Oklahoma’s Tribal Nations. We collaborated with the Tribal Nations to develop a plan; Chickasaw and Cherokee Nations would leverage their existing infrastructure to offer the benefit in Muscogee (Creek) Nation, and contract with Muscogee (Creek) Nation to help fund the required administrative matching funds. We removed barriers and created capacity, coordinating the collaboration, managing the technology infrastructure, supporting community outreach, and leveraging our existing call center to provide Summer EBT customer service.

The result was not perfect, but it was unprecedented, impactful, and created capacity for the future. Muscogee (Creek) Nation served an additional 93,000 children in 2024. Between these three Tribal Nations, nearly half of the eligible children in the state received benefits. According to a fact sheet recently published by the Urban Institute, Oklahoma Summer EBT recipients reported lower food insecurity rates (65 percent) than eligible non-participants (82 percent). Oklahoma Summer EBT recipients also reported increased access to nutritious foods, including fruits, vegetables, dairy, and whole grains. About 75 percent of recipients reported that it freed up funds to buy other food items.

Changes coming in 2025: Building a roadmap for future success

Judy did call back, this time to our hotline, to check her card balance and let us know about a challenge buying milk at her local store. Like many parents, she expressed that she wished she had known more about the program before the card arrived in her mail.

As we look forward to this summer, our experience with Summer EBT in 2024 provides a clear path forward with a focus on closing the gap between eligible children and enrolled children, increasing card utilization, and improving user experience. The collaboration continues, adding new Tribal Nations who will administer in 2025 by leveraging the systems and infrastructure developed in the previous year. While the program is poised to make an even greater impact in 2025, it can also provide a roadmap to other Tribal Nations and states who want to administer the program but may lack the capacity or existing infrastructure to do so.

Solutions can be streamlined: Data processing and card issuance can be efficient, administrators can cut costs through collaboration, community partners can leverage relationships to enhance customer experience, and feedback can drive meaningful improvements in benefits and delivery. Due to participant feedback, this year, families like Judy’s will receive Summer EBT information from their schools, and will get an enrollment email and/or text message when they are entered into the system. They will be able to log into a parent portal to update their address before card issuance to prevent delays. They will have access to a new suite of materials and customer service tools to improve their shopping experiences.  

Protecting nutrition programs is more important than ever

Even with this critical collaboration, between 100,000 and 200,000 children in Oklahoma will not have access to Summer EBT this year because they do not live in a participating Tribe’s service area. Now, more than ever, we must advocate to protect programs like Summer EBT, SNAP, and WIC from funding cuts, burdensome requirements, and unnecessary participation criteria.

If you are an Oklahoma resident, please consider signing up for Hunger Free Oklahoma's Policy and Advocacy Updates to stay informed about threats to—and opportunities to expand—Summer EBT to all eligible children.
National readers, please call your congressional representatives and demand that critical nutrition programs like Summer EBT are kept intact.

This work requires all of us. Together we can assure a Hunger Free Oklahoma and nation.