Keyword/Tag: Dallas ISD

Brighter Bites, Dallas ISD Partner with USDA Program

Posted on May 21, 2020 by -

Brighter Bites and Dallas ISD have joined forces to distribute fresh food to families through the USDA’s Farmers to Families Food Box program. The program was started by the USDA in April, during the height of the COVID-19 crisis, and aims to distribute fresh food to underserved families. The Dallas program includes distributions at schools, YMCAs, and other community organizations.

Currently the program includes weekly distributions every Thursday at Dallas ISD schools. Dallas ISD recently distributed a press release about its school outreach, which was picked up by Patch.com.

Brighter Bites in Dallas, TX

Posted on July 3, 2019 by -

In the summer of 2015, Brighter Bites began serving families in Dallas, TX — the program’s first expansion outside of its home in Houston. This past school year, the Dallas team served families at 20 programming sites across the city in Dallas ISD, Garland ISD, and Mesquite ISD.

Map of Brighter Bites sites in Dallas, TX, during the 2018-2019 school year

The Brighter Bites Dallas program would not be possible without the incredible support of partners like North Texas Food Bank, Brother’s Produce, Taylor Farms, Hardie’s Fresh Foods,  Village Farms, and Mann Packing. Each of these partners supports Brighter Bites by providing us with produce donations, warehouse resources, and/or logistics support, all of which are crucial to making our program a success. By collaborating with Brighter Bites, these companies demonstrate both their commitment to helping communities in the Dallas area that don’t have reliable access to fresh food and their confidence in our program to help families change the way they are eating. We could not be more grateful for their partnership.

The tight-knit Dallas programming team will soon be led by incoming Program Director Julie MacPherson, who joins Brighter Bites after spending several years in Washington, D.C., Portland, and Dallas working in a variety of areas in the nonprofit space. The Dallas program director role was previously held by Alicia Farhat, who established the Dallas program nearly five years ago and helped it grow to a footprint of 20 schools in the Dallas area, serving thousands of Dallas families each year. Brighter Bites misses Alicia, and we wish her the very best! The rest of the team includes Program Manager Magaly Solis and Program Coordinators Maryann Aguinaga, Jenna Babbitt, Josh Meyer, and Dallas Riley. The team is supported by four incredible Program Associates, Suzan Mackay, Jocelyn Hunt, Yesenia Mejia, and Yolanda Johnson, as well as a high school fieldwork intern, Su Min Yoon, and a graduate school dietetic intern, Allie Kleppe.

The Dallas team has a dedicated workspace at GoodWork, a Dallas coworking office, where they enjoy working in a naturally-lit environment conducive to team building, especially through GoodWork’s periodic yoga and fitness classes! The programming team is also joined at the GoodWork office by three members of the Brighter Bites national team including Director of Strategic Parntnerships Meredith Spence, Sourcing Manager Jennifer Boone, and Nutrition Education Program Manager Jacqueline Noyola.

This summer, the Brighter Bites Dallas programming team is serving over 500 families at eight different summer sites. Join the team by signing up to volunteer at a Dallas site or in a Brighter Bites city near you!

Thanks to the Dallas team for all they do to create communities of health in Dallas!

Fueling up for Fall in the Metroplex

Posted on August 26, 2016 by -

Dallas team photo

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.