The West Virginia Feed to Achieve Act is a progressive piece of legislation and is the first of its kind in the nation. The need for the bill was simple: every child needs nutritious meals in order to achieve his or her potential. In the mountain state, due to high rates of poverty, meals provided at school are often the only nutritious meals many children receive daily. The West Virginia Feed to Achieve Act will not only require that every child is given an opportunity to eat a minimum of two nutritious meals per instructional day, it also creates public-private partnerships to secure funding that will provide children with access to healthy, nutritious meals outside of the school day. The West Virginia Feed to Achieve Act will fill in the gaps when kids are most at risk for proper nutrition: after school, weekends, during the summer months, holidays and snow days. Together we can all make West Virginia a healthy hunger-free state one meal at a time.
Effectively provide a minimum of two nutritious meals each day for all school children in West Virginia.
- Objective 1: Realign breakfast with the instructional day by requiring innovative Breakfast Delivery Strategies in all schools.
- School breakfast is not an interruption to the school day; it’s an integral and vital part of the school day.
- All schools are required to adopt an approved breakfast delivery strategy that allows every child the opportunity to eat breakfast.
- Breakfast Delivery Strategies include:
- Grab-And-Go Breakfast
- Breakfast in the Classroom
- Breakfast After First Period
- Or a combination of the above
- Objective 2: Develop strategies and methods to create an environment that increases participation in the school breakfast, lunch and afterschool feeding programs.
- School administration must engage in practices that support the West Virginia Feed to Achieve Act.
- The cafeteria/meal environment must be conducive to participation and must avoid strategies that have a negative impact.
Establish public-private partnerships to provide funding and outreach that will improve access to and increase participation in child nutrition programs.
- Objective 1: Funding: Establish a West Virginia Feed to Achieve Fund at the state agency level and in every county.
- Each county board of education may utilize its fund to provide supplemental dollars to increase participation in child nutrition programs.
- The State Department of Education may utilize its fund to assist county boards of education in counties whose fund lacks financial contributions.
- Donors can contribute to these funds in order to support child nutrition programs in West Virginia and make Feed to Achieve a success.
- Individuals or businesses who contribute funding may specify the school or child nutrition program.
- Objective 2: Outreach: Establish public-private partnerships to enhance current or advance additional child nutrition programs during the instructional day as well as outside of school hours.
Collaborations will be made with allied organization to combat childhood hunger in West Virginia and may include partnering with:
- Local food banks
- Back-pack feeding programs
- Federal and state departments of agriculture
- Department of Health and Human Resources
- Local Master Gardeners
- County Extension Agents and other experts in the field of agriculture
What can YOU do?
- Companies, businesses and individuals can direct their contribution dollars to the most basic need and worthy cause - feeding hungry kids.
- Elected officials can pass laws like the West Virginia Feed to Achieve Act to ensure every child has access to healthy meals year-round: at school, in the evenings, on weekends, during the summer months and on snow days.
- Social service agencies can work together to fill the hunger gap by providing access to food in rural areas especially those with high poverty rates.
- Farmers can grow nutritious food and sell it to schools, parents and the community.
- School personnel can provide at least two nutritious meals a day all the while making eating at school cool and easy.
- Parents can encourage healthy eating habits at home.
- Media can play a key role in shifting our culture to one which values nutrition by featuring positive and healthy living stories.
The Inspiration Behind West Virginia Feed to Achieve
The inspiration for Feed to Achieve came to West Virginia Senate Majority Leader John Unger, the originator of the bill, while visiting the third grade students at Berkeley Heights Elementary School in Martinsburg, West Virginia. Senator Unger began an interactive exercise with the students to demonstrate how a bill becomes a law. He asked the students, “If you could change one thing in this school, what would it be?” He heard a couple responses that one would expect to hear from a group of third graders like “a longer recess” and “I’d like to have an extra lunch”.
The young pretend senators began to debate these two ideas. When Senator Unger asked one young man why he would support having a second lunch, he responded “I want the second lunch so when I get home, I won’t eat mommy and daddy’s food and my brother will have something to eat.” After hearing this startling response from such a young child, Senator Unger asked the rest of the students how many of them were in the same situation as the little boy. Hands went up all around the room and it was at that moment that the good Senator knew something more must be done to ensure no child goes hungry in West Virginia.
He realized that having the best teachers, innovative curriculum, modern technology and outstanding school facilities are not enough when students are hungry and unhealthy. He found that scientific research shows it also requires good nutrition and physical activity for students to achieve. Senator Unger then established a partnership with the West Virginia Office of Child Nutrition and worked to design and implement the Feed to Achieve Act that came to life and is having great results in West Virginia.
ALL of us can eliminate hunger one meal at a time!
The West Virginia Office of Child Nutrition is committed to ending childhood hunger and providing nutritious meals to all our children. We all want our kids to be healthy and successful in life.
The West Virginia Office of Child Nutrition administers the following Federal Child Nutrition Programs & Initiatives:
- School Breakfast Program
- National School Lunch Program
- Child & Adult Care Food Program
- Fresh Fruit & Vegetable Program
- Summer Food Service Program
- Farm to School
Richard Goff, MBA
Office of Child Nutrition
West Virginia Department of Education
Building 6, Room 252
1900 Kanawha Boulevard, East
Charleston, WV 25305