There’s a bill in the South Carolina Senate that, if passed, would give all SC public school students free meals every day. Sponsored by Senator Katrina Shealy (R-District 23), Senator Stephen Goldfinch (R-District 34), Senator Mia McLeod (D-District 22) and Senator Marion Kimpson (D-District 42), S.148 seeks to ensure all students get free breakfast and lunch by providing guidelines for eligible schools to participate in the USDA Community Eligibility Program (CEP). It also establishes a state-level reimbursement program for those schools that are not eligible for CEP and extends the lunch period to 30 minutes.
“This bill addresses multiple issues that schools, students, and parents are facing these days,” says Meg Stanley, executive director of Wholespire. “I’m talking about school budgets, administrative workload, hunger, poor grades and behavior, school lunch debt, food shaming, social pressures and added financial stress for parents.”
74% of children are income eligible for federal nutrition programs (at or below 185% of poverty)
For the last two years, parents didn’t have to worry about paying for school meals and school administrators didn’t have to worry about tracking and collecting lunch money. During COVID-19, the USDA enacted national waivers that allowed many schools to provide free meals and get reimbursed by the federal government. Now that the waivers have ended, schools are now returning to collecting breakfast and lunch money, parents are having to decide how to pay for and prepare lunches and students with debt are being served a crusty sandwich instead of a balanced hot meal and getting picked on by their peers.
“For too many students, eating breakfast and lunch at school is the only time in their day that they get a nutritious meal,” says Stanley. “If we want to improve the quality of education in South Carolina and make it equitable, we have to start somewhere and that’s with the bellies of our students.”
Breakfast and lunch are important to every student’s health and classroom performance. Nutritious meals provide energy that fuels the brain and helps with attention span, which influences test scores and grade-level advancement. When a child is hungry, it’s difficult to pay attention to anything else.
In 2022, Wholespire published a blog called Everything you need to know about the Community Eligibility Program. It makes the case for eligible schools to apply for CEP. The same benefits of CEP can be applied to S.148. If passed, here’s how schools, families and students will benefit from receiving free meals at schools:
Benefits for Schools
Eliminates unpaid school debt. Every student gets free breakfast and lunch. Families don’t pay and administrators don’t have to worry about collecting money and managing accounts.
Reduces administrative burdens.
Improves school nutrition staff morale. Staff focuses more on nutritious meals and less on the nutrition budget.
Can generate revenue for school nutrition budgets. Oftentimes, CEP leads to an increase in breakfast and lunch participation, which increases revenue for the nutrition budget.
Can make it easier to serve meals in the classroom. Teachers only need to count the number of meals being served to students in their classroom rather than tracking free, reduced, and paid meals.
Benefits for Families and Students
Improves student attendance and advancement. A study published in the Journal of Hunger & Environmental Nutrition found significant benefits for students attending CEP schools, including higher attendance rates and more students advancing beyond 10th grade.
Fights hunger. The same study mentioned in the previous bullet also found students attending schools with CEP were nearly 3 times less likely to be food insecure.
Promotes equity and reduces stigma. CEP eliminates the out-of-pocket costs for families and reduces the stigma or embarrassment some students may feel by participating in the meals program. CEP also eliminates school lunch shaming, as no student can be turned away or given an alternative meal from failure to pay.
Reduces stress for families and students. Families with tight food budgets can rest assured that their child gets nutritious meals at school, reducing financial strain at home. Students don’t have to worry about paying for meals either.
Advocating for health in all policies is a priority for Wholespire, whose mission is to provide communities with proven and sustainable approaches that lead to increased access to healthy choices for ALL people. If you want to advocate for S.148, we encourage you to become a Wholespire advocate.
Over the course of the past few years, corporate wellness strategies have been on the rise, and for good reason. When executed properly, they can not only improve the overall health of your workforce, they can also increase productivity and positively affect your organization’s bottom line. But what makes a wellness program effective, and what are companies doing to respond to the events of the last few years? Read on to learn more.
The Benefits of an Effective Corporate Wellness Strategy
Creating a plan to encourage healthy eating and active living among your employees will benefit not only them but your organization as a whole. Below are some of the major reasons why you may want to consider developing a corporate wellness strategy of your own.
Decrease in Absenteeism
Corporate wellness strategies can help create a more physically and mentally healthy workforce. A healthier workforce is far less likely to miss time on the job, meaning you can all but cross absenteeism off your list of things to worry about as the leader of your organization.
Combat Chronic Disease
A good corporate wellness strategy is a form of chronic disease prevention. With the proper resources, education, and support system in place, your staff can learn to take on healthier habits and avoid serious health issues.
Save Money on Healthcare Costs
A generally healthy staff is most likely going to require much fewer and less expensive medical costs than an unhealthy one. That means that investing in a corporate wellness program can ultimately save your organization money on healthcare and related expenses.
Creating an Effective Health Strategy in a Post-Pandemic World
Just like pretty much everything else over the course of the past year, corporate health strategies have been completely altered by the COVID-19 pandemic. With remote work becoming far more prevalent and mental health issues on the rise, organizations are going to need to adjust their wellness programs to reflect these changes and a number of others. Below are some of the major focal points of post-pandemic corporate health strategies.
● Increased telemedicine and video resources ● Greater access to mental health benefits ● Adjustment to the work-from-home model ● Increased support for those with chronic conditions ● Greater use of public health data
Although vaccines are being distributed and the world is slowly returning to normal, certain changes resulting from COVID-19 may be permanent. It’s imperative to acknowledge these changes in order to create an effective corporate wellness program.
Reaching Beyond the Workplace
Companies have an opportunity to positively affect community health with their wellness programs, too. By creating a workplace that values health, you can serve as a healthy eating and active-living model for other companies and to your community as a whole.
Your company could also take it one step further than that and partner with community organizations in order to engage in public health advocacy. Using your platform to do things like combat hunger in the state, take a stand against food insecurity and health disparities, and promote a healthy lifestyle can boost your community and your company’s reputation.
Ready to incorporate HEAL into your workplace? Contact us today [LINK TO CONTACT PAGE] and we can help outline your next steps and provide you with resources to get started.
It’s safe to say that most of us would like to see some sort of change in our communities and the world at large, but maybe most of us don’t know how to make that change happen.
While community betterment work may seem daunting, who will do it if you and your neighbors don’t? Plus, making a change where you live is one of the most fulfilling things any person can do.
There is a famous quote about change. Margaret Mead reminds us to “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world; indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.”
If you’re looking to make a difference and create change in your community, read on for some inspiring ideas.
The Best Ways to Give Back
There are many ways for you to give back to your community and help to improve it, and all of them involve one or more of the following three things: Time, effort, and generosity.
Whichever you feel you have or can give the most of, start there. For example, if you’re able to, donate money or resources to a local charitable cause. If you have extra time on your hands, get involved in grassroots advocacy or volunteer your time to help influence policy and create systemic change. Below are some more ideas for getting active in your community.
Youth Engagement Programs
Perhaps the best way to create positive change in your community is by reaching out to its youngest members and offering your knowledge, skills, and experience. If you can influence the youth of your community, you can influence the future of your community.
Community Health Initiatives
Nutrition and physical health have a direct impact on mental and emotional health. The consequences affect all the individuals in your community as well as your community as a whole. Seek better community funding for health initiatives, engage in food insecurity advocacy, or advocate for better community training. These are just three examples of how you can address systemic issues in your community and help make a difference.
Community Celebrations
Few things bring people closer together than tradition and celebration. If you can help organize a celebratory event for your community, you may open the door for more serious work to get done.
No one way of giving back to your community is necessarily greater or more effective than another. What’s important is that whatever you choose to do speaks to you.
The Ripple Effect of Trying to Make a Difference
When you take the time to engage with your community and make a difference, you inspire other people to do the same. Those people will then aim to “pay it forward” and make a difference themselves, and so on and so forth.
You may only be one person with limited time and resources, but the ripple effect of the good you do will reach far beyond yourself. Start that ripple effect today and get involved in community initiatives.
If you’re ready to get involved, contact us today and we can connect you with a community leader!
Group of friends on a walk & balancing on a tree trunk in the forest.
You may have heard of HEAL before. Hey, you may even know that it stands for healthy eating and active living (if so, kudos to you)! But what you may not know is that the mission of HEAL is a lot bigger than to promote healthy personal choices.
There are so many life factors that can lead to poor nutrition and low levels of physical activity in certain communities, particularly in those where income levels are low. These factors are important to learn about as they extend far beyond personal decision-making.
To gain a better understanding of the obstacles to healthy eating and active living as well as what the ultimate goals of HEAL really are, keep reading!
The Dangers of a Poor Diet and Idle Lifestyle
To understand what HEAL aims to achieve, you must know what it’s trying to combat, which is anything associated with or resulting from a poor diet and idle lifestyle choices, including obesity, heart disease, diabetes, stroke, high cholesterol, and high blood pressure, and a variety of other serious health complications.
HEAL recognizes the severity of these issues and attempts to reduce their impact on communities of all socioeconomic conditions by influencing relevant policies and addressing underlying causes. We hope our efforts can remove barriers to accessible exercise and provide greater access to healthy eating and active living options for all.
Healthy Eating
Did your parents ever ask you, “Honey, have you eaten your broccoli?” Most people would say yes. The first half of the acronym HEAL is something many of us learned about when we were very young. However, it takes more than some parental coaxing to get entire communities to eat healthy, and that’s because the root of the issue goes far beyond a distaste for veggies.
Many communities don’t have access to healthy food options. Or else, if they do, these options are far too expensive to buy. The lack of nutritious food in underserved communities does not just affect dinner tables but workplaces, schools, places of worship, and other eating locations, too.
One of the main goals of HEAL’s various community health initiatives is to address the underlying causes of food access issues. We help educate communities about nutrition and the dangers of a poor diet and ultimately provide them with greater access to affordable, fresh, and healthy food.
Active Living
Active living is a term intended to describe a daily living routine inclusive of physical activity whenever possible. It’s not just about getting in a regular workout, it’s about opting to walk or bike somewhere rather than drive, for example. In order to promote active living, HEAL coalitions seek to increase safe access to physical activities in communities that lack proper facilities, such as sidewalks and crosswalks, and equipment. Our goal is also to influence policy in order to create more community space where physical activity is possible.
In sum, we want to knock down barriers to healthy eating and active living and HEAL communities that suffer from poor nutrition and physical inactivity due to circumstances beyond their control.
Want more information on HEAL or have questions about how to help your community? Email us at info@wholespire.org.
Diversity, equity, and inclusion are among Wholespire’s core values, which is why integrating all three of them into the fabric of our organization is part of our current three-year strategic plan. Between 2021 and 2023, we hope to incorporate DEI (with a particular focus on racial equity) into all of our organizational practices in a measurable way. We aim to promote these practices among all of our local chapters.
In order to achieve these goals, we’re going to be training and educating ourselves on DEI, assessing our organizational DEI landscape for areas in need of improvement, and implementing new practices, standards, and policies in order to create an institutional structure that is predicated on diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Why Is DEI Work Important?
Working to incorporate diversity, equity, and inclusion into not only our organization but all facets of society is of the utmost importance. Demands for DEI approaches seem to be growing louder by the day. Meaningful attempts to bring DEI to businesses, educational institutions, and other organizations have been on the rise for years now. However, with widespread protests on racial discrimination and police brutality in the summer of 2020, the globe as a whole seems focused on how we can make conditions more diverse, equal, and inclusive.
DEI is about affording all individuals an equal opportunity to be educated, employed, and free as per the U.S. Constitution. However, it’s also about providing marginalized groups with the sort of representation they need to bring about lasting systemic change. It’s hard to argue against the importance of something like that.
How to Get Involved
If you’re interested in becoming a champion of greater diversity, equity, and inclusion in any facet of your community, there are a number of avenues you can pursue. The first step would be to better educate yourself on not only DEI but also any races, cultures, religions, sexual orientations, etc. with which you are not familiar. Once you’ve gained a deeper understanding of these marginalized groups, seek out members of your community who are taking action to foster diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Perhaps there’s an advocacy group seeking to influence DEI policy. Or maybe there’s a community coalition that’s looking to gather different social and cultural groups in order to address local issues pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion. There could also be groups of DEI activists that organize rallies and protests in response to the injustices they see in their community and in the world at large. Seek out the group that speaks to you and join them.
Learning Resources
There are free resources, social media groups, and entire college courses all centered on DEI, so it’s safe to say there’s plenty to learn on the subject. It may seem very daunting to dive into this type of activism, especially since it’s so important to so many people. Just know that, when it comes to DEI, perfection is not expected. All you need is the willingness to learn and fight for what you believe!
If you want to learn more about Wholespire’s race equity in the workplace journey, visit our DEI webpage. It has complete information about our framework, as well as resources to explore. You can also find race equity resources on Options for Action.
