Feeding Our Future

We all must help alleviate student hunger and ensure teens like Jason are ready and able to learn. Evidence proves hungry kids are seven times as likely to have behavioural problems as well nourished youth. Only one in 16 teens receives free or subsidized food at school. The funding received to feed Toronto youth is only pennies a day. It is not enough.

In “A plea from Toronto's poorest schools: Feed our children”, recently published in the Globe and Mail, well-known Toronto journalist Christie Blatchford wrote about the “critical role a full belly plays in helping children and youth succeed in school, and encouraged readers to remember the hungry children in our own city by making a donation to the Feeding Our Future program by donating to the Toronto Foundation for Student Success.”

The Feeding Our Future program, launching September 2008, will serve approximately 6,000 students, attending three high schools and four middle schools, located in North York in the vicinity of Jane and Finch. This community experiences elevated rates of poverty, immigration, and violent incidents and also has the highest rate of diabetes and child obesity in all of Canada (the Institute for Clinical Evaluative Sciences – November 2007)

• 68% of the students do not eat breakfast every day; 21% never do.
• 54% of the students do not eat lunch every day; 5% never do.

A teacher in one of the targeted Jane & Finch area schools sent a student to the office for disciplinary action. At the end of the day, it was explained that the student has only one meal per day, and only at about 8:00 p.m. every night. The food was locked up. The Vice Principal went on to say that the student's behaviour should be looked at in that context. The teacher was so moved that she brought lunch for this student every day.

Hunger is an all too familiar condition for these young people. Available grants only feed the ones in dire straits and even then, what proud teenager wants to have to beg for food. We need to be able to not only provide a sustainable food program for all of our students but also educate them about healthy food choices.

The students in these schools, ages from 10 – 16, struggle with issues that stem from poverty, life in a new country and all the other emotional and physical changes many of us remember well from adolescence. Many of the parents have already left for work before the students wake up. The students arise in the morning, get dressed and go to school on their own. Often, by the time they arrive at school the cafeteria has closed for the morning.

In addition, safety issues reported in the Jane & Finch area can’t help but spill over into the local high schools in the community. This has been demonstrated by disruptive student behaviour at all the secondary schools in the area. Many of these issues can be directly linked to poverty in the area, inadequate housing, and hunger. When asked directly what supports were most needed, the principals of these schools unanimously agreed that they first needed to feed their students so that other supports could have an impact.

Although school-wide nutrition programs are common in Toronto’s elementary and middle schools, this will be our first secondary school nutrition program. A moderately active 17 year old boy needs as much as 2700 calories to maintain normal weight and growth. With this program every one of the 6,000 students will be able to start the day with healthy food from three food groups such as grain breads, hummus, cheese, fresh fruit, yogurt etc.

The program costs approximately $600,000 to feed 6,000 students once per school day for the academic year.

Principals will provide daily nutrition to all students in their schools.

• Short term outcomes will include:

1. Improved health
2. Improved attention to school
3. Improved behaviour

• Long term outcomes will include:

1. Improved graduation rates
2. Reduced incidence of violence in the school and community
3. Reduced incidence of diabetes and hypertension
4. Improved nutrition for entire families

The Need

In 2008, in our wealthy city of Toronto, more than 36% of children live in poverty. The most recent United Way report outlined that the average family income in our city is $10,000 below the provincial average. Ontario has been called the child poverty capital of Canada and regrettably Toronto is then the child poverty capital within Ontario. In our Toronto, one in three of our children still lives in poverty.

Many of these same children come to school hungry. A recent survey conducted by the Toronto District School Board (TDSB) revealed that 41% of our children come to school without having eaten breakfast. We know that we are not reaching all our hungry secondary students. We know many nutrition programs forgo milk to stretch their money. Although, the Toronto Foundation for Student Success (TFSS) supports over 490 breakfast, lunch and snack programs which feed over 83,000 children each school day, there is still much work to do.

Add to hunger, the other family stresses that poverty brings - many of these same families are new to Canada and are also struggling with the associated challenges of adapting to a new culture and often a new language. Compounding that in thousands of cases are children who cannot see the blackboard or who cannot hear their teacher.

Often, hunger, poverty and frustration lead to anti-social behaviour or hopelessness. Our support of mentoring programs such as the Student Success Mentoring Initiative Mentoring program has been making inroads with children who previously thought they were invisible.

Nutrition Programs

Nutrition programs are school community based, with a local advisory committee consisting of school administration, teachers, parents and other community volunteers. This group oversees the program operations from bookkeeping to menu planning. Student nutrition programs support learning readiness. Elementary and secondary schools are serving food as part of the regular school day so that students wanting to learn but too hungry to concentrate, can fully participate in the classroom. Well nourished students are ready and able to learn. School based nutrition programs serve 83,000 students from Kindergarten to Grade 12. The meals are nutritious and healthy and sustained by a strong partnership investment from the city of Toronto and the province of Ontario to ensure student success.

However, this is just not enough to cover the complete cost of a meal. Funding only subsidizes approximately 24 cents on the dollar for every meal served for elementary schools and approximately 46 cents for secondary schools. Programs cannot afford the cost of fresh fruits and vegetables which is a crucial component required to meet nutritional values of the meals served.

Poverty is a reality for these children. The income level of families in these neighbourhoods is limited and at times even below the minimum standards. Parents are finding themselves facing critical food shortages at home. After paying the rent and utilities very little is left for nutritious food which tends to be more expensive. One of our administrators, a principal at Elmbank Junior Middle Academy captures the crisis best and has told us that “many children have responsibilities far beyond their young years.”

Apple Program

For over seven years, Canadian Feed the Children worked with the Toronto District School Board to bring close to 3 million apples into our schools. This donation had allowed for 83,000 of our students to benefit from an increase in daily nutrients just by eating a fresh and juicy apple.

The current Apple Program is an immediate response to the June 2007 cancellation of the CFTC AppleChek program. Schools continue to be faced with a critical shortage of fresh fruits to support the nutrition program. Children living in poverty suffer from critical vitamin deficiencies as a result of poor diets. An apple serving is a complete food portion required by grant criteria for nutrition programs.

With the help of Foundations, Corporations and private individuals, several delivery partners and our volunteer Board of Directors, The Apple program was reinstated October 2007. The cost to run the program is an ongoing outlay of $200,000 a year.

For every $5.00 we raise together, 25 children will each receive an apple twice per week, throughout the school year. The cost to replace an apple in the nutrition program fluctuates tremendously in the retail market leaving schools helpless to be able to purchase apples on their own. However, the Apple program has the ability to work directly with our growers to purchase apples for a much lower cost.

Vision & Hearing Screening Clinics

Hundreds of children living in high need communities cannot see the blackboard clearly, or hear classroom lessons clearly. Too many of these children are not having their hearing and vision checked and still more cannot afford glasses or hearing devices to correct these problems. There are many reasons for this.

In many Toronto communities, families new to Canada have limited English language skills and do not or cannot access the available medical services. Unfamiliarity with the Canadian medical system, a fear of having their child labelled with a learning disability and not having the financial means to purchase eyeglasses presents obstacles to the learning of many school age students.

The "in-school" screening clinics provide a single access point for families to a team of health professionals in the local school to identify any immediate issues and make the appropriate referrals. Principals in high need schools reported that children who may be eligible for special education assistance were unable to access this support because parents were not responding to the school’s request to have their child’s vision and hearing tested as required in the first part of the assessment process.

The Hearing, Speech and Vision Screening Clinic Pilot Project was developed to address this need. In the 2005-2006 school year, these “clinics” were held in seven schools with the pilot expanded to 12 school communities in the 2006/2007 school year. The results of the expanded pilot were staggering.

Clinics are delivered through the Parenting and Family Literacy Centre located in the schools, providing a familiar and trusting environment for the families. Parents are engaged during the testing so the children feel comfortable with the screening process. Ongoing support is provided after the testing and the program begins to define alternatives that are neighbourhood based. These programs are less costly and require less intensive intervention from professionals. Assessments are then translated into functional program plans for the families along with linkages to relevant agencies and professionals.

The professionals who provide their services include the Parenting and Family Literacy Centre’s Parent Worker, Audiologists, Speech Pathologists as well as foreign trained physicians seeking TOEFL and Canadian accreditation.

Parents are engaged through their local school by staff they know; supervision is provided for younger siblings; and, there is follow-up from the same staff person to arrange further assessment by the appropriate medical personnel. Parents are assisted in negotiating through the medical system. Blocks of appointments at local hospitals, as well as transportation, have been arranged to ensure follow though.

Fully 48% of all children screened were referred for medical follow-up, largely for vision correction. As a result, the TFSS made the expansion of this critical program a priority for the 2007/2008 school year. To date, private individuals, foundations and corporations have donated enough funding to expand the number of clinics from 24 to 50 with further expansion planned next year. Due to such an enormous demand, we expect to provide 100 clinics in 2008/09.

Student Success Mentoring Initiative

 

Children that cannot see or cannot hear cannot learn.

 

Child poverty is increasing in Canada and children who are frequently attending school hungry and/or frustrated are not prepared to learn. For many children, this lack of focus and hope, leads to frustration in the classroom, which eventually leads to aggressive disruptive behaviour.

To combat this situation, in collaboration with celebrity NBA player Jerome Williams, and motivational speaker Johnny Williams lll, the Toronto Foundation for Student Success developed and tested an effective “Mentoring Initiative” program, proven to help develop student character and help at-risk students succeed.

The Student Success Mentoring Initiative was developed to:

• motivate more than 15,000 at-risk TDSB students and encourage them to strive toward success through motivational speeches, mentorship and field trip experiences.
• help at-risk students redefine personal success and promote 5 principles for achieving it.
• encourage youth’s acceptance of nutritional support offered at schools by issuing a S.E.E. ME Challenge to all students.
• cultivate student success stories

Through this program, students have already experienced:

• improved attendance
• improved classroom behaviour
• improved homework completion
• increased involvement from parents and other local role models
• movement towards challenging the worsening perception of “at-risk” kids.

The curriculum is separated into strategic themes for each week of the program. The structured educational activities offer an opportunity for the students to build upon their image at school and within their community, learn or refine a useable life skill and participate in a structured physical activity that involves teamwork. A healthy snack is provided with nutritional information on the physical activity days to promote a healthy lifestyle.

It appears there is a strong impact having a real celebrity (NBA star) come to speak directly with a student. The results go beyond any other mentoring program we’ve seen. The celebrity and motivational speaker often attend with their father, providing much needed father and grandfather figures. Subsequent visits to each school as well as field trips, enables the students to form a bond with their “hero(s)”.

This unique program is currently funded through corporate donations and ad hoc public donations throughout the year. The program’s success has created interest amongst other schools who are asking us to expand into more schools; but lack of funding is preventing us from doing so. The programs are received exceedingly well by both the students and the staff.