At Brighter Bites, we love seeing students get excited about green beans, kiwis, and other fresh fruits and vegetables. It lets us know we are successfully creating communities of health through fresh food! If you’ve never been to a Brighter Bites distribution in person to experience how fun produce can be, we invite you to read through a few letters that Brighter Bites received from students in our Austin and NYC programs. They’re guaranteed to brighten your day!
Brighter Bites’ Austin team recently joined our friends from the Produce Marketing Association (PMA) for a special South by Southwest (SXSW) event. PMA hosted a free, Brighter Bites-themed lunch for SXSW attendees, who came to learn more about both organizations and our innovative partnership.
The event kicked off with a simulated bagging experience in which every lunch attendee became a Brighter Bites volunteer, helping us assemble over 50 bags of fresh produce. Each bag contained seven produce items that were later feature ingredients in the brown bag lunches provided to attendees. While bagging, attendees learned about the Brighter Bites three-step formula and our positive impact on health behavior in Austin and across the country.
While assisting volunteers with the bagging process, Founder Lisa Helfman and Executive Director Samuel Newman also helped explain our mission of creating communities of health through fresh food and how we’re meeting this goal by caring deeply for every person our program encounters.
We had a great experience spending the day at SXSW with our friends from PMA. See some of our favorite snaps from the event below!
You can read more about our event and PMA’s other SXSW engagement activities in an article published by The Produce News here.
During the fall 2017 season, school faculty across the country implemented produce activities and CATCH Nutrition Education lessons in their classrooms to make learning about produce fun for students at Brighter Bites schools. We’re so grateful for the partnership of these amazing educators, whose engagement and belief in our program drove its success.
We were thrilled to receive a variety of positive testimonials from faculty at our schools as the season came to a close and are happy to share some of the feedback from educators in Austin, TX:
I teach Special Education, so most of my students are autistic and really do not like to try new foods. They get pretty particular about what they will eat, so I try to find recipes that they would be willing to try. If we can get them to at least try a taste of the new fruit or veggie, we are getting over a very big hurdle. We are making a book of the different fruits and veggies that we try. Since we’ve started doing Brighter Bites this year, my kids have grown more flexible and are willing to try more new fruits and veggies! – Teacher, Langford Elementary
It’s nice to know that the students are open to trying new foods, especially after they are encouraged from their peers. – Teacher, Odom Elementary
Parents later reported that their children were requesting [mangoes] be purchased for consumption at home. – Teacher, Metz Elementary
I was amazed at how open-minded they were this week, willing to try the lettuces and tomatoes! – Teacher, Langford Elementary
The students love to interact with the produce by touching it, smelling it and tasting it. A large number of our students already knew that frying food made it unhealthy. – Teacher, Langford Elementary
One boy commented, “I didn’t know I liked vegetables until we tried them this year. I just didn’t know I liked them.” – Teacher, Langford Elementary
Families at Odom Elementary School in Austin, TX were in for a treat when the Brighter Bites Austin team hosted a produce education and cooking demo centered around the yummy superfood kale! The event started with a discussion of the science behind kids’ palates (hint: did you know kids taste food differently than adults’?) and then transitioned into a talk about the health benefits of kale and a lesson on multiple ways to prepare it.
The Brighter Bites Austin team then demonstrated how to cook Brighter Bites’ own “Smoky Greens” recipe in front of the 15 parents and 2 students in attendance and served the vegetable four different ways: with sauteed potatoes, tomatoes, and green bell peppers; on a baked potato with chives and parmesan cheese; on whole wheat toast with avocado and scrambled eggs; and finally in a raw smoothie with apple, mango, cucumber, and avocado! In addition to the yummy meals, families also got to try homemade baked kale chips, which were quite the hit.
The demo incorporated almost every item from the Brighter Bites produce bags for Odom families that week! We hope it prompted lots of kale creativity 🙂
Share your creative kale recipes with us on Twitter!
Tweet @BrighterBites
It’s that time of year again!
Brighter Bites headed back to school this month with programming in both Dallas and Austin at 14 schools. Students learned all about eating the rainbow and how yummy fruit can be while picking up their first batch of fresh produce to take home.
In Dallas, students and families got to try out the yummy Perfect Pear and Brussels Sprout Salad and our Watermelon Salsa, while Austin families tried one of our favorites, Mango Tango Salsa.
Many Dallas families got to try Bok Choy for the first time, a spoon cabbage often found in Chinese cooking. They also went home with delicious blueberries and strawberries.
A huge thank you to our wonderful volunteers – we couldn’t do it without you! Here’s to a great season with all of our families in Austin and Dallas!
On Friday, April 7, nearly 100 volunteers and their children arrived at the Central Texas Food Bank for an afternoon of food, fun, and socializing. Volunteers from all eight Brighter Bites sites came in full force, happily representing their schools and excited to mix and mingle with fellow volunteers.
Last month Brighter Bites completed spring semester programming in Austin at our eight schools in the Austin Independent School District. Over the course of eight weeks, we provided 336,459 pounds of fresh produce to approximately 1,495 families.
We’re glowing with pride here at Brighter Bites about the story reporter Addie Broyles wrote in the Austin-American Statesman today about our program in Austin!
Read the story here.
|
|
Today we’re delighted to announce a new program partnership with Shipt, the on-demand grocery delivery service. Shipt will sponsor Brighter Bites programming in 2017 at one school in each of our three cities: Austin, Houston, and Dallas.
“We’re committed to long-term support of the Brighter Bites mission,” says Liz Willis Cook, Community Partnership Specialist at Shipt, “and plan to provide volunteer time and in-kind support in addition to a monetary commitment throughout our partnership.”
Shipt’s initial contribution came through their significant donation to Brighter Bites in support of our fundraising effort for the Austin Marathon. With Shipt’s help, Brighter Bites will benefit from a Moody Foundation donation which made a grant that will match all donations raised by the 27 official Austin Gives Miles charities, up to $10,000 per charity.
We’re looking forward to spending Marathon weekend with the folks from Shipt. First, we’ll share a booth at the Race Expo on Friday, February 17 & Saturday, February 18 at the Austin Convention Center. That’s where the race’s 14,000+ runners pick up their race packets, try new running gear, and sample energy snacks. Brighter Bites and Shipt will be handing out crisp red apples and swag to anyone who comes to our booth! Shipt will also join us at the Brighter Bites Aid Station located at Mile 8 on the Marathon course, also known as The Rock at Town Lake, where our volunteers will be cheering on thousands of runners and hydrating them as they pass.
We are over the moon about our new partnership with Shipt! And don’t you just love their logo?
