Grant boosts Texas children’s access to healthy food

The Walmart Foundation and the Texas Hunger Initiative are teaming up to help end childhood hunger and boost access to healthy food in Texas.

A two-year, $2 million grant from the Walmart Foundation will provide funding for the Texas Hunger Initiative to place a child-hunger outreach specialist in all 12 of its regional offices across the state. The specialists will work to increase awareness and participation in summer and after-school meal programs, and they will recruit and establish more feeding sites to host such programs.

Children and parents receive information from DentaQuest representatives at the Community Resource Fair during the “Friends, Food and Fun Summer Meals” kick-off at Western Hills United Methodist Church in Fort Worth.The grant also will allow Texas Hunger Initiative, based in the Baylor School of Social Work and launched in cooperation with the Texas Christian Life Commission, to partner with Baylor University’s Hankamer School of Business to launch an innovative research study on the efficiency of summer meals programs nationwide.

Through the summer meals program, students—age18 and younger—can receive free meals at participating feeding sites, which can include schools, nonprofit organizations, churches or apartment complexes.

According to the most recent Food Research and Action Center report, only one in seven low-income children who were eligible for summer meals received them in July 2012. Only 14 percent of students who participated in free and reduced lunch programs during the school year used the summer meals program.

Marty Otero, child-hunger outreach specialist in Fort Worth, said most parents and students simply do not know the summer meals program exist.

Kids receive free breakfast from summer meals sponsor CitySquare at a Dallas summer meals awareness event at Casa Grande Village Apartments, coordinated by Texas Hunger Initiative Dallas.“Our hope is to change the mindset of the parents in the community so they understand these meals are here, because they are nutritious and are able to feed their children,” she said.

The grant money also gives specialists the opportunity to identify, recruit and establish more feeding sites for children to receive summer meals. Although more than 1,000 summer feeding sites exist in the Dallas area, only 300 exist in the Fort Worth region, for example.

During the regular school year, Texas public schools are a safe haven for low-income children not adequately fed in their homes, said Loretta Landry, child-hunger outreach specialist in Dallas. When school dismisses at the end of the day, many will not have another full meal until breakfast at school the following morning.

“These kids may or may not be having a meal when they are going (home) at night,“ she said.

The grant gives specialists an opportunity to increase participation in after-school meal programs. Although after-school enrichment programs exist, many organizations provide just a snack or no food at all for participating students. Specialists will inform those organizations about a Texas Department of Agriculture program available that will provide after-school program students with a snack and a meal.

A school or feeding site must be located in an area where 50 percent or more of the student population qualify for free or reduced-priced lunch to be eligible to provide afterschool meals.

All feeding sites, whether preparing meals themselves or working through a vendor, must adhere to USDA guidelines to ensure quality of the food. All meals must include specified amounts of milk, grains, proteins, fruits and vegetables.

“A cheeseburger through the summer meals or after-school meals program may not look like one at a fast food restaurant. … (It is) 100 percent more nutritious,” Otero said.

The grant provides for Texas Hunger Initiative to place a child-hunger outreach specialist at its regional offices in Amarillo, Austin, Dallas, El Paso, Fort Worth, Houston, Lubbock, McAllen, San Angelo, San Antonio, Tyler and Waco. All but two locations currently have a specialist in place to do outreach, while the other two regional locations are in the hiring process.

Funding from the grant is a part of the Walmart Foundation’s $2 billion commitment through 2015 to fight hunger in America and Walmart’s 2011 initiative to provide customers with healthier and more affordable food choices.