Fighting Hunger Together with Walmart & The Walmart Foundation

This post is sponsored on behalf of the Walmart Foundation. As usual, all opinions are my own.

 

Fighting Hunger Together with Walmart & The Walmart Foundation

All across America, many kids have already started their back to school journey as fall begins to settle in. Many of them equipped with new clothes, shoes and a backpack full of the supplies they need for a successful school year. They wake up with excitement, eat breakfast and begin their school day. But what about the ones that aren’t so lucky?

Hunger is an honest reality for many families, and with school back in session, many face financial barriers to getting enough healthy food to thrive. According to the USDA in 2015, 42.2 million people in America, including more than 13.1 million children, lived in households at risk of struggling with hunger. These are the kids that are relying on free and reduced breakfast and lunch programs to provide possibly the only meals they’ll have that day.

Thankfully, there is help! Walmart and the Walmart Foundation have awarded 11 grants totaling $33 million to national nonprofits across the country, helping provide meal programs and nutrition education for youth and families as well as increase access to healthy food, like fruits and vegetables, through state and federal nutrition assistance programs.

The Walmart and Walmart Foundation grants will provide nearly 57 million meals to support nearly 1.5 million people in communities across the country through programs providing year-long meals, breakfast in the classroom, nutrition education and increased access to fresh fruits and vegetables through nutrition assistance programs.

Through grants to 11 nonprofit organizations, Walmart and the Walmart Foundation are providing meals to those who need them the most and helping students access the healthy food they need for focused minds – both in and out of school.

 

Here are a few the great programs Walmart has funded:

• Walmart and the Walmart Foundation are working with long-standing grant partners to fund the following programs:

• Chef Ann Foundation: $350,000 grant provides 101 grants to help schools increase fresh fruit and vegetable procurement, increase participation in the Department of Defense’s Fruit and Vegetable program at 50 schools and provide at least six hours of nutrition education and fruit and vegetable tastings to 35,000 children.
• National League of Cities: $2 million grant to fund year-long meal programs that will provide 2.5 million year-long meals to 32,000 school-aged children across the U.S. by leveraging the Child and Adult Care Food Program and the Summer Food Service Program.
• National Recreation & Park Association: $2.5 million grant to provide 18 million meals to 600,000 children and nutrition education to 150,000 children through its local park and recreation agencies.
• Partners for Breakfast in the Classroom: $7.5 million grant providing funding to support 10.8 million federally reimbursed school breakfast meals through an expansion of the consortium’s state-based universal breakfast strategy.
• Share Our Strength: $5.75 million grant to provide eight-week cooking courses and Cooking Matters at the Store shopping tours to 153,000 participants and to create and pilot a self-guided nutrition education application that aims to serve 25,000 people.

An additional $17.5 million in funding was also provided through grants to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America, Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, Children’s Hunger Alliance, Food Research and Action Center, Single Stop USA, and Y-USA. The organizations are using the grant funds to provide meal programs for students and increase families’ access to healthy food, like fruits and vegetables, through state and federal nutrition assistance programs.

To learn more about Walmart and the Walmart Foundation’s commitments to fighting hunger and providing nutrition education, visit giving.walmart.com.

Remember to count your blessings every single day!