Starting May 3, 2016, Kaboom will award $1 million in prizes through their Play Everywhere Challenge, in collaboration with the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, Target, Playworld, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, and the National Endowment for the Arts. The Play Everywhere Challenge is a national competition for community-driven solutions that integrate play into everyday life and unexpected places, like sidewalks, vacant lots, bus stops, open streets, and beyond. Applicants should consider replicable, scalable innovations in city redevelopment and design that will help make play easy, available, and fun for kids and families. Cities are prime settings for innovative active spaces initiatives because city design impacts human behavior, thus cities have the ...
Want to get your kids to eat vegetables? A lunch lady from New York has cracked the code on how to get picky eaters to eat healthier foods like kale and beans. Donna Riviello, the food service director at Clyde-Savannah Central School District has helped kids try unfamiliar vegetables in school lunches like kale, sweet potatoes, and legumes. Working with marketing tactics and taste testing trials in the schools lunch room, she has kids try out new vegetables and even has them pair it with other favorites. A recent article states that some studies have shown it takes as many as twenty times for a kid to like new foods, and Riviello stated it usually takes students five to seven times to make up their minds about the new vegetables, saying that "There's a psychology to ...
Do you walk? American Public Health Association (APHA) is asking people to get active by walking everyday and entering in their miles or steps towards their overall goal of a billion steps. Even if you only walk 15 minutes a day, or 10 minutes walking the dog, and 10 more going to work, you can enter in your total and help achieve the APHA goal. Learn about how to count your time walking into counting steps or miles here. Each week they will award a $25 Amazon gift card to a participant. On May 31st, 2016, all challenge participants will be eligible to win the grand prize of a Fitbit Charge HR. Learn more and enter your steps now here! Copy & Share on Twitter: Help @PublicHealth reach a billion steps today! Enter to #win prizes! ...
The Be Healthy School Grant Program will make $250,000 of money available for up to 25 schools to be awarded $10,000 grants from the 2016-2017 school year. This Blue Cross Blue Shield grant program allows schools across the state of Alabama, who enroll students in grades K through sixth and apply into the Healthy School Grant Program, a chance to implement school-based health and wellness programs that increase exercise, nutrition and parental involvement throughout the school year. Grant requests and applications will be accepted from now to March and schools considered for grant dollars schools must be located in Ala., serve students in grades K-6, and be public, private or non-profit. Only schools can be awarded the grant dollars, those not supported are for profit schools, ...
Having a healthy lunch is vital to students who consume most of the day's calories at school. Schools in Oyster River Cooperative School District are learning how to work with flavor, spices, culture and more to help increase student's consumption of healthier school lunches in their schools. Themes like "taco Tuesday" are popular among students, offering them a variety of different dressed up fruits and vegetables along with a lean meat for protein in the crunchy taco offered. The district also just won the New Hampshire School Breakfast Challenge with a 69 percent increase in student's participation for consuming high school lunches. The school's director of school nutrition, Doris Demers, has been working with creative and dedicated managers and school board members that have ...
Having fresh foods is vital for many schools across the country, especially for Latino kids who are more likely to be at risk for diet-related diseases like diabetes. Three school districts, Binghamton, Cortland, and Marathon are receiving a federal grant of $100,000 dollars to help students get more local fresh foods on their plates. Since 2012, the districts have been working to connect local schools with local farmers and build relationships to keep local produce in local schools. Working to continue the efforts and expand farm-to-school programs, the funds will help BOCES staff reach out to farmers and get more schools on board with buying local produce. Funds had been awarded in the past to BOCES and helped them train school staff in various activities like buying ...
What happens when people get "priced out" of the homes they've lived in for decades? People like Luis Granados step up. Granados, Christopher Gil, and other leaders of the nonprofit Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) didn't stand by when a tech boom in San Francisco’s Mission District brought in higher-priced homes and threatened to push out lower-income families. They embarked on a mission to create 100% affordable housing in the area.
The rising housing costs in San Francisco
Since 1973, the Mission Economic Development Agency (MEDA) offers free financial services to lower-income families in San Francisco’s Mission District, a 30% Latino neighborhood where most rent their homes, said Christopher Gil, the group’s senior content marketing manager. The ...
A new study from the University of Iowa is researching if obesity rates are affected in communities where restaurants label calorie counts on menus. Since 2011, the study has collected calorie-labeled menus from various restaurants where local ordinances require restaurants to publish calorie counts. Researchers have revealed that early evidence from the study suggest that the body mass index (BMI) has fallen over time in areas with required menu labeling, compared to nearby counties. However, David Frisvold, the main researcher and assistant professor of economics at the Tippie College of Business, said in an article that most of the early studies on local menu-labeling laws have evaluated items ordered at large chain restaurants and shows no to little changes in diner's ordering ...
Healthy cooking challenges are not just popular on TV. Now schools in Fairfax Count, Va. are cooking up healthier meals in the Real Food For Kids (RFFK)'s Culinary Challenge and Wellness Expo to change school menus, offering kids the chance to cook up something different, healthy and tasty. To help change school menus to offer more healthy and tasty foods, the challenges gives kids the chance to cook up something different, healthy and tasty and help sprout new ideas into the school menu, all while staying in school budget limits. Twelve Fairfax County Schools competed for awards in three categories, including Smart snacks, Grab 'N Go, and Makeover Lunch Challenge. The challenge was to make a meal that would work within the schools nutrition, portion and cost standards. ...
