Supporting OUR students

We as school nutrition professionals see this every day. Probably more than anyone else. We see the little boy stick the banana or apple from lunch in his pocket to save for later. We see the

little girl who gobbles down every bite of her lunch as if it will disappear if she is too slow. The moody teenager who hides that he/she is eating school lunch from friends. Yeah, we see it. We know it is there, we want to help. What can I do? What can WE do? Start small. Start with finding out what resources are available in your area. Ask how easy/hard is it to use the resources. Go to your local food pantry, ask the wonderful volunteers who work there (because we know most of them are volunteers), how does the process work. Check out my video chat with my local food pantry for questions you can ask. They are a wealth of information and an amazing local resource for your families.

Then tell your families what you found. Encourage them to check it out. IF your school has a newsletter, ask for some space in it. Use that space to tell families about the food pantry and what it can help them out with, how easy it can be to take advantage of the resource and how they can give back.

Stay tuned for my next post on what the USDA has done for school nutrition that can be a great resource for food insecure students and families.