News Type: Milestones

Brighter Bites Hits 10,000,000 Pound Milestone

Posted on December 19, 2016 by Christina Blick -

Last month Brighter Bites hit a remarkable milestone:

In just 4 years, we have provided more than 10,000,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables to over 20,000 families in Texas!!

We could not be prouder of our Brighter Bites staff or more grateful for our partners at the Houston Food Bank, North Texas Food Bank, Central Texas Food Bank, and Sysco. Thank you!!

Pictured above (clockwise): Brighter Bites Founders Lisa Helfman & Shreela Sharma; Brighter Bites Houston Program Staff; Brighter Bites Austin Program Staff; Brighter Bites Dallas Program Staff.

Brighter Bites Delivers Nearly 2,000,000 Pounds of Produce to Almost 8,000 Dallas Families in 2016

Posted on December 13, 2016 by Christina Blick -

North Texas Food Bank employees pictured above (left to right): Sally Seybert, Noe Saldivar, Jerrye Hall, Dale Long, Marcus Moss, Vince Rhinehart, Carl Rhodes, Danny Foreman, and Steve Coppedge.

The year 2016 has been the busiest yet for the Brighter Bites team in Dallas. As fall programming comes to an end this month, we will have delivered more than 763,900 pounds of fresh fruits and veggies to 3,330 families. Over the course of the entire year, we have distributed nearly 2,000,000 pounds of produce to almost 8,000 families.

With such a productive year, we could not be prouder of our team or more grateful for the support we have received from each school and summer camp we served this year. The parent and community volunteers, faculty, and administration at all of our sites have embraced our mission to create communities of health in Dallas and consistently work with us to help us achieve our goals at their sites. Our Program Director, Alicia Farhat, along with Program Coordinators Jacqueline Noyola, Magaly Solis, and Catherine Miller and Program Associates Meredith Spence, Jamie Carrillo, Dallas Ruggieri, Maryann Aguinaga, and Stephanie Wells truly appreciate all of them and their enthusiasm for Brighter Bites.

Our programming would not be possible without the unwavering support of the staff at the North Texas Food Bank (NTFB). The warehouse, transportation, and procurement teams at NTFB work in tandem with Brighter Bites Dallas to ensure that our families receive a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables every week that we provide programming. We cannot thank them enough for their partnership. Vince Rhinehart, Marcus Moss, Jerrye Hall, and Joe Crawford, among many other NTFB team members (pictured above), are the people who help to ensure there is a steady supply of produce arriving at our schools and summer camps all year long.

Finally, we want to thank FreshPoint Dallas for organizing produce donations from various suppliers this fall semester, and to everyone else who has donated their time and resources to ensure the success of Brighter Bites in Dallas.Your support of our mission is a testament to our success.

Brighter Bites Program Coordinator Honored at Ceremony in Galveston

Posted on December 6, 2016 by Christina Blick -

2016 Texas CATCH Champion Jacqueline Noyola with CATCH Program Director Peter Cribb after the award ceremony in Galveston, TX.

A few months ago we shared wonderful news about Brighter Bites Dallas Program Coordinator Jacqueline Noyola when she was chosen as one of the 2016 Texas CATCH Champions. CATCH stands for Coordinated Approach To Child Health and is scientifically proven to be a highly-effective health, physical activity, and nutrition education program for children from all backgrounds. The CATCH Champion Award recognizes individuals for their untiring dedication to create healthy environments for the children in Texas.

On Thursday, December 1, Jacqueline and the seven other Champions were honored at a ceremony at the Moody Gardens Hotel in Galveston, Texas. Jacqueline attended the event with her husband, Brighter Bites Dallas Program Director Alicia Farhat and Brighter Bites Senior Program Director Mike Pomeroy. “Being selected as a 2016 Texas CATCH Champion has given me tremendous encouragement and inspiration!, said Jacqueline recently. “I’m honored to be recognized among such a talented and experienced group of school health professionals and I’m thrilled that Brighter Bites has been recognized for the implementation of our nutrition education pillar.”

A warm congratulations to Jacqueline for her continuous efforts to innovate and strengthen the methods Brighter Bites uses to reinforce the CATCH programming at Brighter Bites schools.

Brighter Bites Delivers 10 Million Pounds of Produce in 4 Years!

Posted on November 28, 2016 by Christina Blick -

It took just four short years for Brighter Bites to deliver 10,000,000 pounds of fresh fruits and vegetables to more than 110 schools, camps, afters chool programs, and Head Starts in Houston, Dallas, and Austin. More than 20,000 families have taken this produce home and prepared it for their families and friends. This is impact!

Brighter Bites Austin Hits One Million Pounds!

Posted on November 20, 2016 by Christina Blick -

The Brighter Bites Austin team is proud to announce a remarkable milestone: since summer 2015, Brighter Bites has distributed more than 1 million pounds of produce to over 3,500 Austin families! The Austin team, made of up Program Director, Maggie Whittington, Program Coordinators Bethany Dawsonand Ellen Orabone and Program Associates Eliza Weeks, Katherine Patchak, and Christina JeanBaptiste, are grateful for the tremendous help they have received from parent and community volunteers, leadership, faculty, and staff at all Brighter Bites schools and camps in reaching this goal.

This moment cannot pass without a shout out to the incredible partners we work with every day at the Central Texas Food Bank. The staff members, pictured below, provide tremendous support to Brighter Bites by sourcing and providing donated produce to our program, storing that produce in the food bank’s warehouse, and delivering it to our sites.

“I love what Brighter Bites is doing and the way that our missions complement one another,” Bethany Carney, Food Source Manager at the food bank, told the Byte recently. Mike Wooten, the food bank’s Warehouse Manager says, “Contributing to Brighter Bites has been very rewarding.”

This wonderful group of individuals is committed to our success and we are grateful to them everyday. Thanks also goes to PureFlavor, Potandon Produce, and Church Brothers Farms for their generous donations of fruits and vegetables, FreshPoint South Texas for organizing those donations, and to everyone else who has donated to Brighter Bites with their time or otherwise. We could not have reached this goal without you.

Brighter Bites Receives 2016 Texas Health Champion Award

Posted on September 16, 2016 by Christina Blick -

On Thursday, September 15, Brighter was presented with the 2016 Texas Health Champion Award at a ceremony held at the Blanton Museum of Art in Austin. Scott McClelland, President of H-E-B in Houston, introduced Founder Lisa Helfman and in his remarks said Brighter Bites is changing outcomes and changing the way people shop for groceries in a positive way.

Lisa accepted the award with Brighter Bites Co-Founder Dr. Shreela Sharma and Executive Director Sam Newman. Thanking Dr. Sharma for her partnership, Lisa touted the publication of her most recent research in Preventive Medicine, “Today we know that Brighter Bites works,” Lisa told the audience. “To think that this little idea I had has scientific credibility is so humbling, and then to be recognized as the Texas Health Champion .. it’s just beyond my wildest expectations. Thank you for the honor, thank you for giving us the opportunity, and we hope to make you proud in the future by helping many more families see that health really can be achieved through fresh food.”

Watch a video of the entire awards ceremony here.

Brighter Bites Houston by the Numbers

Posted on September 9, 2016 by Christina Blick -

This fall, the Brighter Bites program in Houston will be our biggest season yet, serving more schools and families, and delivering more produce and nutrition education materials than ever before. Since there are so many schools, people, and produce that make up Brighter Bites in Houston in fall 2016, we thought we’d share our eye-popping stats with you:

50 Total number of sites/schools
16 Elementary schools new to Brighter Bites

9 Total full-time program staff
3 New full-time program staff

10 Total part-time program staff
6 New part-time program staff

7 Total fall interns
4+ Number of interns last fall

7500 Number of families to be served this fall
5000 Number of families served last fall

1.8 million Pounds of produce to be provided in Houston this fall
1.1 million Pounds of produce provided in Houston last fall

Brighter Bites Begins Year Two in Austin: Staff focus on Coordinated School Health

Posted on September 2, 2016 by Christina Blick -

On September 6, Brighter Bites Austin will kick off fall programming in seven elementary schools and one early childhood center in the Austin Independent School District (AISD). We are thrilled to welcome back: Casey Elementary, Cunningham Elementary, Odom Elementary, and Langford Elementary. New schools joining us this fall are: Metz Elementary, Linder Elementary, Norman Elementary, and Uphaus Early Childhood Center. Unlike last year, Brighter Bites programming extends to all grades this year and the faculty serving those grades, with the exception of Langford Elementary, where families and teachers in grades pre-K through 3rd will be eligible to sign up for the program.

To prepare our schools for Brighter Bites programming and spark excitement for the beautiful produce and delicious recipes coming their way, our staff have been speaking with school leaders and faculty before programming begins. These meetings introduce and review the specifics of our dynamic nutrition education program (Food Access + Food Literacy + Food Engagement) as well as our process for partnering with teachers to utilize Brighter Bites produce as fun, hands-on educational tools in the classroom. Additionally, we explain how Brighter Bites fits into all of AISD’s coordinated school health programming.

AISD is different from the other school districts Brighter Bites works with, because this district uses the Whole School, Whole Community, Whole Child (WSCC) model in addition to the Coordinated Approach to Child Health (CATCH ) curriculum, used in all of our other school districts. As a coordinated school health approach to student learning and wellness, WSCC embraces every aspect of a child’s education and health to improve his/her development. It includes not only physical activity, nutrition, family, and community involvement, but also social services and counseling, health services, social and emotional learning, employee wellness, and the physical environment. Brighter Bites fits nicely into the community involvement component of this model and we are grateful to AISD for incorporating our program into this coordinated school health approach.

At Brighter Bites, our goal is to create a community of health through fresh food, nutrition education, and fun at each school campus we serve, by increasing exposure to fruits and vegetables and empowering kids to try new foods. Classroom teachers, as significant role models in the school environment, are crucial to our success. The programming staff of Brighter Bites in Austin is charged up to begin our fall distributions next week. We’re looking forward to seeing familiar faces, catching up with volunteer alumni, and making new Brighter Bites friends.

Fueling up for Fall in the Metroplex

Posted on August 26, 2016 by Christina Blick -

After an un-beet-lievable summer, Brighter Bites Dallas is gearing up for an exciting fall! We are thrilled to partner with 15 Dallas area elementary schools: 12 in the Dallas Independent School District and three in Uplift Education. Over the next semester, we expect to serve 3,000 individual families (~500 more than last fall), distributing approximately 720,000 pounds of produce and thousands of healthy tip sheets, nutrition handbooks, recipe cards, and tasty samples! Our staff has been busy developing several new recipes in our test kitchen for students and their families to taste at pick up and make at home. We think the “Better with Thyme” Green Bean Salad is going to be a surprise hit!

Over the last few weeks, the Brighter Bites Dallas team has been presenting to school staff and administrators about the Brighter Bites program and the educational tools we use to create communities of health through fresh food and nutrition education. This school year Brighter Bites will provide even more coordinated school health resources to schools than last year by encouraging them to increase the number of CATCH (Coordinated Approach to Child Health) curriculum lessons taught in the classroom and recommending teachers use the produce from their own Brighter Bites bags as an educational tool. Because teachers are powerful role models for students, their focus on empowering children to make better eating choices will further support our program’s desire to turn their elementary schools into communities of health.

Brighter Bites Wins 2016 Texas Health Champion Award!

Posted on August 8, 2016 by Christina Blick -

As part of the 9th Annual Texas Obesity Awareness Week (September 11-17, 2016), the Texas Health Champion Award is presented to public health leaders who have demonstrated exemplary achievement in reducing the burden and/or raising awareness of the obesity epidemic in Texas.

Brighter Bites is this year’s organizational winner and we are thrilled to share the news with you!

The awards will be presented at the 2016 Texas Health Champion Award Ceremony on September 15 in Austin. The ceremony will provide attendees the opportunity to meet and network with other leaders in obesity prevention from across the state as well as celebrate the successes of the 2016 Champions. The event is free and open to the public. Click here to learn more about the award ceremony and register to attend. We hope you will join us!