Florida Impact has been awarded a $40,000 grant to support its plan to increase afterschool meals for children in Broward and Miami-Dade Counties.

The grant from Health Foundation of South Florida will enable Florida Impact to provide education and advocacy directed to elected and governmental officials about Florida’s Afterschool Meals Program with the ultimate goal to increase the number of sponsors, sites and hungry children benefiting from the federally sponsored USDA program.

“Every summer for several years in Florida, more and more hungry children have gotten a nutritious meal every day through the federally supported Summer BreakSpot program,” Florida Impact CEO Trudy Novicki said. “We believe with some administrative changes in Florida, more community locations can provide children in need with afterschool meals during the year.”

The big hurdle that Florida Impact will tackle with this grant is the childcare licensing requirement for sites wanting to serve afterschool meals. This onerous rule isn’t the case for the summer food program; thus, more providers are able to provide more kids with nutritious meals during the summer. The sites get reimbursed for the food through the federal Afterschool Meals Program.

Florida Impact will call the attention of Florida legislators to this issue, and provide education and advocacy for the 2018 Florida Legislative Session, which begins in January. If the program were to move under the Florida Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services, instead of under the Department of Health where it currently resides, this problem would be resolved. The work of providers would be simplified, and they would serve hungry children all year round.

To illustrate the potential gains, currently in four major metro areas of Florida, only 13%, or 64,000 of the 509,000 kids who are receiving a free or reduced price lunch are also receiving a free afterschool supper. An increase to 30% participation would add nearly 90,000 more children routinely receiving an evening meal. Smaller cities and rural parts of Florida would benefit even more from a simplified process, as their current afterschool meal participation is even lower than in the big cities.

Florida Impact will conduct rigorous outreach at both the state and local levels to ensure that federal child nutrition and meal programs are fully accessible to those for whom they are intended. The organization will inform and organize the direct involvement of community leaders in policy and program advocacy.

“This project seeks to ensure Florida children don’t go hungry. If successful, our state will be tapping into millions of unused federal food and nutrition dollars,” Novicki said. “Last year we estimated that more than $129 million in federal nutrition funding available for children was left unused in Florida last year. That’s a lot of children left hungry who should not have been.”

Learn more about the program at www.FloridaAfterschoolMeals.org!

The over 300,000 Floridians who qualify for SNAP (food stamps) now face a work requirement which took effect on January 1st, 2017. Particularly in rural communities where jobs are far and few between, this new requirement threatens the ability for many to feed their families. State Senators Bill Montford and Dwight Bullard have spoken out against reinstating the work requirement saying that state is diverse and economic standing varies.

“Especially in North Florida, in these rural counties that I represent, they have not felt this economic revival that people talk about,” Montford said. “Unemployment is still high. The jobs are not there. … The needs the SNAP program meets, I would say the needs in these rural counties are just as great as they were in 2009.”

“They’re being penalized even though they’re trying, even though their effort is good,” Bullard said.

Read more on this news in the Tampa Bay Business Journal and find your elected officials to tell them this new work requirement is unjust.

As recently shared in a post from the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida blog, Second Harvest’s Kids Cafe Afterschool Supper Program began offering fresh, nutritious meals and snacks to children at four different Orange County Parks and Recreation Centers. This follows months and months of planning and efforts by Central Florida partners, including Florida Impact’s very own Kim Mowatt. To learn more about this exciting development, make sure to read the full post on the blog of the Second Harvest Food Bank of Central Florida.

On January 24th, the Florida Department of Agriculture & Consumer Services (FDACS) and Florida Impact co-hosted the Annual Summer BreakSpot Partners Meeting at six locations across Florida and via webinar. Over 250 community leaders representing nearly 150 organizations, agencies, and elected officials attended this robust event, where current and prospective Summer BreakSpot sponsors and partners shared best practices from 2016 and planned for the summer ahead.

Download the PowerPoint presentation and view a complete list of participating organizations. The presentation includes excellent resources and models including information about summer programming partnerships with law enforcement agencies and hospitals, social media strategies, mid-summer spike events, and more!

Congratulations to the winners of the Summer BreakSpot Challenge: The Christian Fellowship Missionary Baptist Church, Pasco County Schools, Feeding South Florida, Duval County Schools, Jackson County Schools, Feeding the Gulf Coast, Alachua County Schools, and FLIPANY were recognized for their outstanding work by FDACS Deputy Commissioner Alan Edwards.

Meeting resources:

• The meeting agenda

• Answers to the meeting Q&A segment (with references to the Summer Site Meal Gap Data as of 1-25-17; Summer Site Meal Gap Analysis; SFSP, NSLP, and SSO Comparison Chart; and the Share Our Strength Summer Meals Study),

• FDACS’ “Roll in, Eat up” Mobile BreakSpot Guide

• MUSC’s Guide to Serving Meals in Health Care Institutions

• Information about the DoD Fresh Fruit and Vegetable Program

• Find information about the Florida Afterschool Meals Program at www.FloridaAfterschoolMeals.org and on the AMP page of the Florida Department of Health website.

• The National Anti-Hunger Organizations’ (NAHO) sign-on letter to support and safeguard the Federal nutrition programs (see current list of signers).