Back-To-School Hungry: Sharing Our Strength
Back-to-school time can be difficult for the over 13 million kids in the U.S. that are living with hunger. However...
About This Episode
Back-to-school time can be difficult for the over 13 million kids in the U.S. that are living with hunger. However, people all over the country are working together and sharing their strength to feed kids in their communities. Hear some moving examples in another episode from our 2022 series exploring why food is the most important school supply. Chef Lorena Garcia describes how her nonprofit Big Chef, Little Chef works in schools to help kids and families build better relationships with food. 2022 No Kid Hungry Youth Ambassadors Jason Ezell and Tansy Huang tell us about how they use their lived experience and recent college coursework to ease food insecurity in their communities.Resources and Mentions:
Lorena Garcia
Founder
Venezuelan-born Lorena Garcia is currently one of the country’s leading chefs, an accomplished author, producer, and TV host. Garcia left the legal world behind her and enrolled at Johnson & Wales University, graduating with a degree in culinary arts and more recently receiving an honorary doctorate degree. She has worked all over the world including the Ritz Paris and La Torre del Saracino in Italy. Today, she has a successful chain of restaurants, Chica, in Las Vegas, NV, Miami, FL, and Aspen, CO. Garcia developed Big Chef, Little Chef as a comprehensive non-profit program to help children and their families take control of their eating habits and, ultimately, their lives.
Tansy Huang
Food Ambassador
Tansy Huang is a fourth-year undergraduate student studying Food Systems, Nutrition, and Public Health at the University of Washington. Growing up, Tansy loved learning about their culture’s traditional foods and identifies food as a form of cultural heritage. They are driven to learn more about the impact food policy has on our environment, health, economy, attitudes and beliefs.
Jason Ezell
Commnit Organizer
Jason Ezell is a community organizer for Civic Nebraska’s Collective Impact Lincoln partnership. In his work to end hunger, he has coordinated National School Lunch Hero Day events to honor nutrition experts in Nebraska, drafted a best practices report for SFSP, and facilitated dialogues between several food and nutrition leadership groups. Jason also has lived experience with food insecurity and is someone who “understands what it means to be hungry who also must attend school every day.”
Big Chef, Little Chef
Big Chef, Little Chef, the non-profit created by Chef Lorena Garcia, helps kids and their families take control of their eating habits and ultimately, their lives.
Share Our Strength Youth Ambassador Program
Through the support of Sodexo Foundation, Share Our Strength has created a program to involve college-aged youth ambassadors in the fight against childhood hunger by working with one of our state No Kid Hungry partners. Youth ambassadors work on collaborative projects along with the state partner organization and fellow youth ambassador(s). These projects help increase the number of children getting access to healthy meals in the community and other tasks that help the state partners work towards their goal to help ens childhood hunger.
Nebraska Appleseed
Nebraska Appleseed collaborates with community members and leaders, elected officials, and partner organizations to address Nebraska’s deeply rooted, interrelated systemic issues in a holistic approach.
FareStart
FareStart has been helping people transform their lives through food for 30 years — one person, one job and one community at a time.
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