March 2012 - Church supports Kids Eat Smart Clubs

Church supports Kids Eat Smart Clubs

Submitted by Irma Moores

“Breakfast is the most important meal of the day” is a familiar saying, and research suggests that it certainly applies to school children.  It indicates that going to school hungry can negatively impact on children’s academic performance and behaviour.  Yet many children, for a variety of reasons, do not have breakfast before they leave for school each morning.  In response to this, breakfast programs, including the Kids Eat Smart Clubs in Newfoundland and Labrador, are being implemented across Canada and in other countries as well.

Kids Eat Smart was started in Newfoundland in 1992 and has grown in size and impact to the extent that KES Clubs exist in 216 schools across all four of the province’s school districts.  Kids Eat Smart breakfasts are made available to all students in the school who wish to avail of the service, and are “supported by the Kids Eat Smart Foundation Newfoundland and Labrador and the local community.”  Through their Best Practices Policy, Kids Eat Smart “works to ensure that programs serve foods that meet the nutritional needs of growing school children from Kindergarten to grade 12.... [It] also offers support in organizational structure, safe food handling practices, and standards and guidelines essential for running a quality nutrition program.  Most Kids Eat Smart Clubs serve breakfast, but some serve snacks or lunch.”

Essential to Kids Eat Smart’s success is community involvement.  Its mission cannot be met without businesses, organizations, and individuals who understand the importance of this service and support the program financially and or through volunteering for fundraisers or to serve breakfasts.   The following vignettes are examples of how we, as church organizations or individuals can, through the Kids Eat Smart Clubs/breakfast programs, help meet the very real and essential nutritional needs of children right in our own communities.

In October, 2011, at their Annual Conference at Killdevil, the Anglican Church Women of Western Newfoundland decided that, as an outreach project for Food Month, in October, they would donate food items to their local schools for Kids Eat Smart -- “the breakfast program”.  Donations would be brought to church on Thanksgiving Sunday to be collected and delivered to the school.  Primary branches across the Diocese responded with donations of juice, Cheez Whiz, and jam.

For the past several years, the Outreach Committee at St. Michael’s Church in Corner Brook, has supported Kids Eat Smart at CC Loughlin Elementary School by organizing teams of volunteers to serve breakfast every Wednesday morning starting at 7:30.  “Wednesday is egg day, so we need someone for toast, someone for eggs and someone for juice, but it is good to have four people on a team in case one can’t come” explains the parish Outreach Chairperson, Donna Manuel.  With four teams, each person has to go just once a month.  Some of the volunteers are retired people, while others go to serve breakfast before they go to work in the morning.

At Canon Richards Academy in Flower’s Cove, the school solicits volunteers at the beginning of the school year through a parent letter.  Two lead parents – this year, Crystal and Judy Genge -- follow up with telephone calls  and record when volunteers are available so they can schedule them at times that work for them.  In addition to the daily students’ breakfast of  cereal, toast, and juice or milk, once each year, a special breakfast of “egg McMuffins” is prepared and sold as a fundraiser and may be “eaten in” with the children or  “taken out” – a favourite option of people working nearby . 

Between these two schools, on average about eighty students are served nutritious breakfasts every day.  And these are just two of the more than two hundred schools in the province where Kids Eat Smart Clubs exist! What other outreach can we do where we can have such an impact on so many children in our own communities!   J. Michael Murphy, Ed.D, a school breakfast program researcher, stated, “What we find particularly exciting is that this [school breakfast] is a relatively simple intervention that can significantly improve children’s academic performance and psychological well-being.”

The people I spoke to tell me it benefits more than the students.  Volunteers agree that it makes them feel good, too!  

Photo Caption

On Thanksgiving Sunday, ACW members in Western Newfoundland Diocese brought food items to church for the Kids Eat Smart Clubs at their local schools. Children from Bear Cove and Flower's Cove are on hand when Marilyn Whalen, President of the Flower's Cove ACW delivers juice and cereal donated by members of St. Boniface ACW and St. Barnabas ACW to Canon Richards Academy in Flower's Cove.