No kid should have to wonder where their next meal will come from. The Nebraska SNAC (Student Nutrition Action Committee) works to make sure that doesn’t happen.
SNAC is focused on making sure every child in Nebraska has access to the food they need to learn and grow. We do this through educating and engaging key child nutrition stakeholders and identifying, developing and sharing resources, training and best practices statewide.
We’ve had a busy school year this year and as it comes to an end, we thought it might be fun to share a recap of SNAC priorities and projects. If you agree, we’d love to have you join us next year!
At SNAC, we divide our work into two parts: School-Time & Out-of-School Time. We also work on some bigger projects that engage the whole group.
School-Time (including work on School Breakfast / Lunch / Community Eligibility (CEP) / Provision 2)
The School-Time small group set themselves this goal for the year: Get more districts doing best practices that get more kids eating (like alternative breakfast models, allowing breakfast after the Bell, CEP, provision 2, etc.).
To get to that goal, SNAC hosted a successful Nebraska School Breakfast Challenge in February 2024! The Challenge engaged 26 schools from across the state and participants competed for cash prizes by completing activities that increased access to school meals and earned them points. Over $1500 in prizes was awarded and districts pledged to continue some of the most impactful activities they tested including giving students more time to eat, adopting a grab and go service model, and trying 2nd Chance Breakfast. Read more about the Challenge here.
Out-of-School Time (including work on Summer Food Service Program / After School Meals / Farm To School)
The Out-of-School Time small group set themselves this goal for the year: Get more sponsors/sites/kids using regular and the new rural non-congregate Summer Food Service Program (SFSP).
To achieve this goal, SNAC worked on three tactics:
- Create resources with examples of SFSP rural non-congregate options and do outreach to existing eligible sponsors.
- Results: SNAC created this succinct and useful Nebraska rural non-congregate resource and distributed it statewide, along with NDE.
- Work to find eligible but not participating schools/area orgs/potential SFSP sponsors and do outreach.
- Results: SNAC did outreach to 100s of school districts multiple times with various messages encouraging SFSP participation including the new rural non-congregate option. We learned that at least five districts would be participating in part due to these efforts!
- Outreach to the community to increase the number of kids participating at SFSP sites.
- Results: SNAC is working to revamp and distribute our Nebraska SFSP outreach toolkit, which is designed to support sponsor and nonprofit partner outreach. We will also distribute template language to support general outreach around mid-May.
Whole Group
The whole group met and continued this long-standing goal for the year: Build up professionalization of nutrition staff roles and show existing staff appreciation.
Our Nebraska School Nutrition Heroes event is celebrating its 3rd year. We have worked to collect comments about school nutrition staff from community members who are impacted by their hard work. This year we had 26 comments recognizing over 40 staff members. We promoted comments about these Heroes on social media, through our webpage, and mailed out great gifts (mugs and stickers) that they can enjoy in the future. We also sent each district in the state (377) School Nutrition Hero stickers and a personalized letter thanking them for their work!
We don’t meet during summers but continue to support the good work happening around the state through summer feeding programs. Thanks to SNAC participants, the NDE staff, and funders for making all of this possible. Let’s keep it going starting August of 2024!
If you are a Nebraska child nutrition stakeholder and want to be a part of our efforts, please read more here or reach out to Eric!