Contact: Johanna Elsemore at 202-478-6554 or jelsemore@strength.org
Washington, DC – Today, the national anti-hunger campaign No Kid Hungry announced six national Innovation Acceleration Award recipients, organizations and entrepreneurs who are making No Kid Hungry a reality through innovative practices and programs. Each will receive $1,000 to support its work to end childhood hunger.
The award announcement accompanies the release of No Kid Hungry’s Hunger Innovation Report, which examines attitudes toward innovation and documents bold ideas from across the country that are working to connect more kids with healthy meals.
Through a national survey, No Kid Hungry uncovered innovation working across all nutrition programs – from school breakfast to summer meals, SNAP, WIC, food pantries and nutrition education. By employing human-centered design, tapping into technology and adopting mainstream models from other sectors, these leaders and entrepreneurs are scaling successful programs and finding ways to reach kids and families where they are.
When the local summer meals site was no longer a safe place to serve much-needed meals, Nacogdoches ISD and community members came together and volunteered their own yards as summer meal sites, allowing staff from the school district to utilize them as a location to serve meals to kids in the neighborhood – confirming what we already know to be true: the answer is community.
“We’ve learned so much from these exceptional leaders,” said Kirsten Craft, No Kid Hungry’s senior manager for program innovation. “What this project taught us is that successful models exist all around the country that can be built on and adapted to meet the needs of every community.”
In America today, 1 in 7 kids is living in a family that struggles with hunger – but it doesn’t have to be this way. No Kid Hungry is ending childhood hunger by identifying barriers that prevent kids from consistently getting the food they need and finding ways to eliminate them.
Kathy Green, Director, No Kid Hungry Texas