Malheur County has the highest percentage of children living in poverty in Oregon. When these children are in school, they qualify for free breakfast, lunch and after-school meals. But these meals generally aren’t provided on school holiday breaks. The Ontario School District – the largest in the county – contacted Oregon State University Extension’s Family and Community Health/SNAP-Education team to identify solutions and partners to address this need of childhood hunger during school breaks.
In response, Extension helped convene a collaboration of the Oregon Dairy and Nutrition Council, Ontario School District Food Service and Ontario School District administration. The collaborators planned, organized and delivered individual meal kits that included the ingredients to make a nutritious breakfast and lunch during a school break. Meal recipes were selected from the OSU Food Hero site that meet school meal program dietary guidelines and are easy to prepare. Food Hero is a statewide initiative of the Oregon Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education (SNAP-Ed) program and was developed by OSU Extension in English and Spanish.
In addition to the main objective of offsetting food insecurity, the partners developed a secondary goal to provide nutrition education, teach basic cooking skills and encourage physical activity. Other information such as proper hand-washing, food storage, and food safety as well as educational activities for youth to engage in over the break were included in a supplemental educational packet. Oregon Dairy and Nutrition Council educational resources accompanied the kits. All materials were provided in both English and Spanish.
As a result, the team distributed more than 1,100 meal kits to underresourced families during holiday breaks in the 2020-21 school year. Due to the success of the meal kits and educational packets the school district continues to distribute kits during Thanksgiving, winter and spring breaks.