When planning a week’s worth of meals on a very limited income, some parents aren’t sure how to make ends meet and provide their families with nutritious meals. Share Our Strength’s Operation Frontline, which is nationally sponsored by the ConAgra Foods Foundation, helps these families by teaching them nutrition, food safety and budgeting skills that will last a lifetime.

Operation Frontline: Learning to cook healthy meals on a budget
Author: Kori Reed, ConAgra Foods Foundation Executive Director

A few weeks ago, a colleague brought a blog post to my attention. At first I was skeptical.

She wanted me to read something from Shut Up, Foodies. Where was this going? But I trusted her assurances that it was a great post. And she was right.

Shut Up, Foodies had come across the information that the ConAgra Foods Foundation is the national sponsor of Operation Frontline. As some people are, the author of the Shut Up, Foodies post was skeptical about our support for the program. In fact, it was “assumed the (cooking) classes would feature ConAgra brands.” 

With a little research, Shut Up, Foodies learned the truth behind our funding model. Operation Frontline is an innovative, behavior-based approach to helping families prepare healthy meals on a limited budget, not a marketing campaign for any particular branded product.

However, while Operation Frontline does not promote any particular brands as part of its cooking and nutrition education, it’s important to know that the ConAgra Foods Foundation’s ability to support innovative programs like it is dependent upon the success of ConAgra Foods, the Foundation’s primary funder. The company’s success fuels the Foundation’s ability to help those in need and to impact society in a positive way through partnerships with groups that are doing great work.

Thank you Shut Up, Foodies for taking the time to look for the story behind the story. We’re fortunate enough to have the ability to be a part of the effort to end child hunger and hope others will join us in supporting groups like Operation Frontline.

Photo Credit: Photo used with the permission of Share Our Strength.

One of our partners in the fight against child hunger, Share Our Strength, is offering a scholarship to 15 culinary students who want to learn more about how they can use their skills in the kitchen to help end child hunger.

Scholarship recipients will attend Share Our Strength’s Conference of Leaders in Washington, D.C., from Oct. 16-18, 2010. The scholarship covers all expenses and allows the 15 lucky culinary students to attend workshops and networking events with top chefs, learn more about food trends and how chefs are getting involved in the fight against hunger, and more.

More details about applying for the scholarship are available on Share Our Strength’s website.

Operation Frontline: The keys to success
Author: Kori Reed, ConAgra Foods Foundation Executive Director

Nearly three years ago, I learned about Operation Frontline, a program operated by the Share Our Strength. I was immediately impressed with the program and its goals.

Essentially, Operation Frontline leverages the strength of the culinary community to teach families how to prepare nutritious meals on a limited budget. Operation Frontline’s behavioral-based approach empowers kids and parents with the knowledge and skills to make healthy meals with the resources available to them.

Finding innovative programs like Operation Frontline and expanding those programs to reach more people is core to how the ConAgra Foods Foundation makes an impact in the community, specifically with regard to the areas of hunger and nutrition education.

Since learning more about the program and its potential to make a difference, the ConAgra Foods Foundation has provided Share Our Strength with more than $3 million in funding, which has been used to increase the number of Operation Frontline sites.

By investing in Operation Frontline and helping expanding the program’s ability to teach more people about nutrition, food choices and more, we’ve had a positive impact on the people who enrolled in the program.  In 2009, Operation Frontline’s accomplishments included: 

•  87 percent of adults who participated in the program said their cooking skills, and therefore their ability to make healthy meals, had improved.
•  96 percent of kids who joined their parents in the Side-by-Side courses said they enjoyed doing so. And when kids enjoy preparing their meals, they’re more likely to eat them. 
•   69 percent of adults said they were eating more fruit and vegetables after they completed the course than before the course.

Having seen Operation Frontline’s promise in its early stages, I am thrilled to see these types of results that show the program is having an impact on people’s lives. It embodies our foundation’s platform of Nourish Today, Flourish Tomorrow as we work to ensure families have access to food and facts about food so that we can all flourish.

Photo Credit: Photo used with the permission of Share Our Strength.

If you’re a fan of Oprah, then you know she is auditioning candidates to host their own show on her new TV network.

One of the audition tapes really caught my eye.

Tiffany is from Bowie, Md., with a husband, three children, a full-time job and a passion for cooking. All-in-all, she’s someone who’s just like you and me. In her audition tape, she talks about the challenges we all face in providing our families with nutritious meals when we don’t have a lot of time or energy. Not to mention how confusing it can be to determine what foods are the best ones for your family.

As a mother and wife with a full-time job too, I can absolutely relate to Tiffany’s story. Watch Tiffany’s audition.

But, as the Executive Director of the ConAgra Foods Foundation, I also see another side to this story.

I have a full-time job that allows me to comfortably support my family, but not everyone is as lucky. In fact, according to U.S. government statistics, 15 million people in America are unemployed.

For mothers, fathers or other caregivers who are struggling to make sure they can pay all of the bills and feed their families, the challenge of providing nutritious meals every day is multiplied several times over.

That’s why the ConAgra Foods Foundation is the national sponsor of Operation Frontline, a ground-breaking cooking and nutrition education program that teaches families how to prepare healthy, delicious meals on a limited budget.

In the first year of our partnership with Operation Frontline, we helped them increase participation in the program by 35 percent and the number of graduates by 40 percent. Even better, the overwhelming majority of adult graduates reported they had improved their families’ food budgeting abilities and their cooking and eating habits. 

This is just one way we’re helping families in need across the nation. We hope you’ll join us and that you’ll support people like Tiffany who are also looking for unique ways to help improve the health of our country.

The above post was originally published on June 24, 2010.