Nutrition programs need cash

AARON HARRIS/TORONTO STAR

C.W. Jefferys principal Audley Salmon, second from right, looks on as student Nathania Cooke, right, picks up a sandwich in the school's foyer on Jan. 8, 2009.

Feeding hungry kids

Growth of school nutrition in Toronto:

• 1991 Former City of Toronto provides $180,000 grant to feed 4,000 kids.
  
• 1994 First provincial grants.
  
• 1998 City pays $1.3 million while province contributes
• $800,000 to feed about 35,000 elementary students in Toronto (1 in 7).
  
• 2007 City pays $2.8 million while province pays $1.4 million to feed more than 90,000 kids (1 in 3 elementary students; 1 in 10 secondary students).
  
• 2009 Province hikes annual funding to $3.8 million to feed 136,000 kids. But program will fail without $4.2 million from the city, an increase of $1.4 million annually.
  

Advocates say school breakfast initiatives need $1.48M more from city this year to survive

January 09, 2009
LAURIE MONSEBRAATEN
SOCIAL JUSTICE REPORTER, Toronto Star

A provincial plan to help Toronto expand school breakfast programs to almost 200 low-income neighbourhoods this year is in jeopardy if the city doesn't match new funds from Queen's Park.

More than 45,000 vulnerable children and youth may lose out unless the city kicks in an additional $1.48 million this year, warns Dr. David McKeown, the city's medical officer of health.

"Without additional municipal funds, the (new) student nutrition programs ... will likely not be funded at a level that is viable," he says in a report to go before the city's community development committee Monday.
But city budget chief Shelly Carroll says the request is one of many that councillors will have to weigh as Toronto struggles to balance its budget in hard economic times. "It's on a long list of things that are going to be hard to do."

The program, which is funded by municipal, provincial and private donations, gives nutritious breakfasts, lunches and snacks to almost 78,000 Toronto elementary students (one in three) and 12,750 high school students (one in 10). The city now spends almost $2.8 million on the program; the province has been spending about half that amount.

The Toronto program – and similar initiatives across the province – have been teetering on the verge of collapse because government funding has not kept pace with growing need and the rising cost of food.

Local groups cheered last spring when the province more than doubled its financial support for student nutrition as part of its down payment on an ambitious plan to cut child poverty by 25 per cent in five years, boosting annual funding in Toronto to almost $3.7 million.

But now it is the city's turn to help stabilize a program that encourages healthy eating habits and provides students the nutrients and energy they need to learn, they say.

Lori Nikkel, of FoodShare, which co-ordinates some 17,600 parent volunteers in Toronto who buy, prepare and serve the food, says the program does more than feed hungry kids. "This is about community building," she said. "The parents are often isolated and marginalized women who start out helping in our programs and end up building the confidence and skills they need to eventually go out and get a job."
They shop locally for food, tap local grocery stores and businesses for donations and organize fundraising events so the whole community gets involved, she added.

Toronto Councillor Joe Mihevc, a member of both the city's community development and budget committees, says student nutrition should be the city's highest priority.

"Yes, we have a budget crunch, but as any family knows, when times are tough you feed the kids first," he said. "For the city not to follow the province's lead on this would be outrageous."

Toronto District School Board superintendent Karen Falconer helped start seven breakfast programs in the Jane-Finch area last fall in response to the 2007 shooting death at C.W. Jefferys Collegiate. She says the city's money is crucial to the programs' survival.

"We're trying to prove the point that when (adolescents) are given an opportunity to eat well, they learn better and become safer," she said about the pilot project that is feeding 6,000 middle- and secondary-school students.

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