The ConAgra Foods Foundation will be awarding a limited number of Community Impact Grants to qualified nonprofit organizations committed to fighting child hunger. The initial application period will be open Jan. 3 to Jan. 14, 2011.
Please carefully review our grant criteria available on our website to determine if you qualify.
(Source: conagrafoodsfoundation.org)
Kori Reed, executive director of the ConAgra Foods Foundation
As we wrap up a short work week and look forward to giving thanks for the good food and great company we are about to enjoy, I am thinking about families who may be struggling this year to put food on the table, especially during the holidays. This is a time when my own kids look forward to their favorite food dishes, and I am thinking about how it would be if I had to look into their faces and say maybe next year – not because I didn’t want to make it, but because I didn’t have the means to make it.
According to a recent MSNBC report, the average cost of this year’s Thanksgiving meal for 10 will be $43.47, that’s 56 cents higher than last year’s average of $42.91. This makes budgets tighter for all of us, but especially those families already needing the extra help this season. The UDSA reports 17.4 million households were food insecure at some point in 2009. What’s alarming is that these families in need are more than likely some of those living in our own neighborhoods.
Here are some easy ways to help:
During my time with the ConAgra Foods Foundation, I am so grateful that I have witnessed first-hand the wonderful things people do to help others in the community. Those “gifts” range from volunteering countless hours to making large cash contributions, to a senior citizen on a fixed income donating $1 (which proportionate to income is a massive gift.) I am thankful for all the wonderful people I’ve been fortunate enough to meet, including families and children who benefit from the support of our non-profit partners and the heroes among us who have started with small steps.I am grateful for every person willing to take that first, second or third step, and I hope you will join us to fight hunger, wherever you are on that journey.
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Author: Stephanie K. Childs, ConAgra Foods Foundation
When I was growing up, I loved reading Choose Your Own Adventure books. I’d read them several times, choosing a different path through the book each time. In fact, my favorite path through a Choose Your Own Adventure book was the one of most destruction and certain doom - mostly because I knew I’d be okay no matter what. Recently, a coworker shared a link to a Hunger 101 tutorial that reminded me immediately of Choose Your Own Adventure books. Developed by the Sacramento Hunger Commission, this Hunger 101 let’s you pick one of four different personalities and then sends you on a journey to purchase enough food for your family. Along the way, you learn how many calories your family needs for the week to be healthy and, if you don’t make enough money to feed your family, you can choose to apply for food stamps, go to a soup kitchen or decline to seek help. I won’t tell you how this particular Choose Your Own Adventure could end. I will tell you that I found it to be both enlightening and frustrating. This Hunger 101 tutorial isn’t a children’s book featuring zombies or pirates or radioactive bugs, but I wish it was, especially knowing that these scenarios are based on real experiences. This is a tutorial that gives each of us a glimpse into the choices many people are forced to make each day and the difficulties they face as they simply try to provide their families with enough to eat. Knowing that, I hope you’ll choose an adventure or even just a path of your own adventure that will help those in need. Choose One or More: - Take the Hunger 101 Challenge - Sign the No Kid Hungry Pledge - Donate to Feeding America - Host a Food Drive |
As part of their ongoing work to combat childhood hunger, Share Our Strength is partnering with the State of Arkansas and the Arkansas Hunger Relief Alliance to end child hunger in Arkansas. This project is possible in part thanks to generation donations from Walmart and Tyson Foods.
The No Kid Hungry Campaign will help reach children at risk of hunger in Arkansas by increasing participation in highly effective but under-utilized federal food and nutrition programs like food stamps (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program or SNAP), the Summer Food Service Program, and School Lunch and School Breakfast Programs.
The ConAgra Foods Foundation is a Core Partner of Share Our Strength and the national sponsor of Operation Frontline.
Harvesting Good Health
Author: Marybeth Howard with Bowdoin Street Health Center and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center
In April 2010, a group of urban youth were selected as Healthy Champions by Bowdoin Street Health Center in Dorchester, Massachusetts, and asked to help increase neighborhood access to fresh produce by tending to their own plot of land in a nearby garden. The Healthy Champions program engages youth to become ambassadors of health within their families, schools, and community.
In addition to learning about the role they can play in creating positive change, “the garden teaches them about the vast benefits of incorporating healthy and affordable foods into their daily lives,” says Bowdoin Street Health Center Executive Director Adela Margules. “At the same time, they will help educate their peers in how these foods will serve to reduce prevalent health issues such as obesity, Type 2 diabetes and asthma in their neighborhood.”
A month later, with support from the ConAgra Foods Foundation and others, the Healthy Champions launched their first Community Gardening Day. Festivities included mapping out garden plots, starting vegetable seeds in cups, and the first annual garden “Dig Day.” These youth leaders have begun to master gardening techniques such as finding appropriate soil composition and ideal seedling placement, the detriments of too much sunshine, and how to thin out plants. Now after months of weeding, watering, and waiting, the Healthy Champions are in the peak of harvest season, reaping basketfuls of cucumbers, squash, tomatoes, basil, and lettuce.
The Healthy Champions are also teaching others about urban gardening, and have launched a mini-marketing campaign to promote fresh produce at the Bowdoin Geneva Farmers Market. (Editor’s Note: Be sure to watch the video above for more information about the Farmers Market.)
Hunger-Free Summer: What do you tell the kids?
Author: Stephanie Childs, ConAgra Foods Foundation
This summer, I had the good fortune to work with Katharine McPhee. She joined the ConAgra Foods Foundation and Feeding America to bring attention to our Hunger-Free Summer initiative.
Throughout the tour, she would regularly explain that she was volunteering at Hunger-Free Summer locations across the nation in order to lend her voice to the efforts to fight hunger and to bring some sunshine into the day for children who rely on summer food programs like those supported by our Hunger-Free Summer grant.
During one interview, a reporter asked her what she tells the kids about why she’s visiting. Katharine’s response? She doesn’t tell them much.
Katharine’s focus was on having fun with the kids and brightening their days. When it came to explaining the issue of child hunger, she was talking to the adults who need to know that there are resources for families in need and facing hunger.
Katharine is right. As we’re finding solutions to end child hunger in America, our work isn’t about telling kids in need that they are in need or to point out that their families struggle to pay the bills and put meals on the table. Our responsibility is to do what we can to provide children with the meals, resources and skills they need to become successful.
Summer is coming to a close, but our work to ensure that children have access to nutritious meals all year isn’t done. In fact, we’re already beginning to plan for next year’s Hunger-Free Summer to make it even more successful.
If you work with a food bank or a children’s summer food program in your community, mark your calendars now. In February 2011, Feeding America will begin its selection process for next year’s Hunger-Free Summer grant recipients.
Working together, we can make sure more kids have a fun-filled Hunger-Free Summer.
Photo Credit: ConAgra Foods Foundation. In the above photo, Katharine McPhee plays with kids who rely on the services provided by the Arkansas Foodbank Network. Arkansas Foodbank Network was one of 23 Hunger-Free Summer grant recipients.
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Sixteen year old Alexandra Peppin, a student in Centennial, Colo., talking about the importance of eating breakfast at school. One of the most significant barriers to academic achievement is hunger. Children who do not get a good breakfast are more likely to struggle in school. Schools that are able to provide breakfast to all students are helping those in need overcome hunger and helping all kids do their best in school. A definite win-win for everyone. |
