No Kid Hungry Launches in L.A.
Posted by Billy Shore on Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Los Angeles is known for many things – bright lights, beaches, and Hollywood glamour – but childhood hunger usually isn’t one of them. The reality is that of the 17 million children who face hunger every year in this country, L.A. is home to more than 1 million of them.
Today, I was pleased to join No Kid Hungry® National Campaign Spokesperson Jeff Bridges, U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack, Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, California Health and Human Services Agency Secretary Diana Dooley, California Food Policy Advocates, Food Network’s Guy Fieri and community, business, education and government leaders to launch the Los Angeles No Kid Hungry® Campaign, a countywide public-private partnership that will work to connect more than 600,000 children and teens to school breakfast and child care nutrition programs.
Right here in Los Angeles, the School Breakfast Program and Child Care Food Program (CCFP) provide children with nutritious meals while kids are in school or daycare. However, more than 70 percent of the children who are eligible don’t participate in school breakfast and more than 45 percent of child care homes and centers are not enrolled in the CCFP.
Los Angeles No Kid Hungry Campaign partners will take steps to reach measurable, first-year goals to increase participation in the School Breakfast Program across Los Angeles County and to enroll child care homes and centers in the Child Care Nutrition Program. They have set a goal of increasing participation in school breakfast by 10 percent in the first year, primarily through building on BreakfastFirst, an initiative led by California Food Policy Advocates.
They will also work to increase enrollment in the CCFP by 10 percent by working closely with elected officials and community leaders to make better use of available federal nutrition funds, and by providing nutrition trainings to centers to help improve the quality of food and beverages served in child care. These steps are part of a long term plan to increase participation in all federal food and nutrition programs in Los Angeles.
This collaboration between both public and private sectors will be critical to closing the gap between the number of children eligible to participate in existing food and nutrition programs, and the unacceptably low percentage who are actually enrolled. Much like the rest of the country, Los Angeles is facing difficult budget issues right now. This Campaign will leverage both private and available federal funding to increase access to these vital nutrition programs.
The Los Angeles Campaign is part of Share Our Strength’s national No Kid Hungry Campaign to end childhood hunger in America by 2015.
With the help of California Food Policy Advocates on the ground, and the generous support of the Campaign’s lead sponsor the Walmart Foundation, Share Our Strength will work to connect children with the healthy food they need to thrive and ensure there is No Kid Hungry in Los Angeles by 2015.
To find about more about the Los Angeles No Kid Hungry Campaign, please visit www.NoKidHungry.org/LosAngeles.
To read more about today’s launch event, please visit: http://strength.org/pressrelease/20110316/ or To read my latest post co-authored with Jeff Bridges on Huffington Post, go to: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/billy-shore/washingtons-best-kept-bilb_834896.html.
March 16, 2011 | 0 comment(s) | Tags: california, childhood hunger, food network, Los Angeles, No Kid Hungry, state partnerships, USDA
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