No Kid Hungry 2021 Annual Report

Kern County in the Central Valley of California is one of the most productive breadbaskets of the world. They grow and export grapes, almonds, fruits, potatoes and other crops that feed millions of people. “We’re surrounded by food every day,” explained Jasmin LoBasso from the Kern County Public Library. “However, our community isn’t necessarily thriving.”

To make sure children in their community didn’t go hungry during summer, the Kern County Library has been providing free meals for kids when school closes since 2014. To stem the tremendous need during the pandemic, they also began serving weekend meals at grab-and-go sites and afterschool meals during the school year, feeding children all year long.

This past year, we invited Kern County Library to join No Kid Hungry’s Promising Practices to End Rural Child Hunger cohort, a new initiative that is funding nine organizations and bringing them together to share their innovative strategies to feed kids in rural communities. These organizations serve as peer trainers, helping one another adapt these approaches so they’ll work elsewhere. We’ll be sharing their experiences, learnings, and advice through case studies and webinars to help other rural communities.

The Kern County Library already has much to share about the success of their year-round programs. With your support, No Kid Hungry grant funding helped launch their direct mail campaign to promote their meal program, expand their afterschool enrichment programs, and purchase equipment like coolers and fridges to better store meals for kids. “Prior to 2021, libraries were not necessarily receiving funding beyond summer to provide food services,” said LoBasso about their grant, “It gave us the push that we needed to move forward and try.”

Nutrition is one of the most basic building-blocks of our health. For some of us, however, making nutritious choices isn’t about swapping a bag of chips for a bag of carrots, it’s about how long can the car payment wait so that there are enough groceries to last through the month. Millions of children under the age of six live in households facing food insecurity and are especially vulnerable to the potential long-term health outcomes that can result.

Dr. Mona Hanna-Atisha, Director at the MSU-Hurley Pediatric Public Health Initiative in Flint Michigan, understands the importance of nutrition as a ‘forever medicine,’ preventing future health concerns, especially for kids harmed by lead poisoning during the Flint water crisis. With funding support from No Kid Hungry, Dr. Hanna-Atisha was able to expand their clinic-based food programs including a program that delivers produce boxes to families with children under six.

This funding was part of No Kid Hungry’s early childhood initiative, funded by donors like you and launched in 2021, which distributed $3 million in grants to more than 120 organizations including healthcare clinics and early childcare centers in 34 states and the District of Columbia. Because early childhood is the most intensive period of brain and body development, we are prioritizing reaching our nation’s youngest children with the nutrition they need. We partner with community sites, operate a national food skills education program, and advocate for improvements to child nutrition programs.

For Ericka Huggins – human rights activist, educator, Black Panther leader, and former political prisoner – the power of the people is a catalyst for change in our society. The importance of engaging, listening, and partnering with individuals in the community was always core to the Panther Party’s efforts. It was the power of the people that drove the Black Panther Party to start their free breakfast program in the 1960s – a forerunner and inspiration of today’s National School Breakfast Program. It is the power of the people and the need to unpack how that power can be fostered, as well as stamped out, that inspired the launch of Conversations on Food Justice, a collaboration between Share Our Strength and the Aspen Institute’s Food and Society Program. 

In this conversation series, we set out to explore the ways the food justice movement has evolved over time, the ways that food intersects race and class, as well as issues like health, education, labor, and the environment. Our ultimate goal for the series is to elevate important issues and to educate, challenge assumptions, and hopefully inspire action.

Each session brings together diverse and important voices to unpack the consequences of unequal food access and discuss how the food justice movement can be a catalyst for equity. Since the series launched, we have brought together a diverse collection of thousands of panelists and attendees that have included philanthropists, nonprofit and community leaders, academics, policy makers, corporate and foundation leaders, and a powerful cross section of organizational stakeholders.