With the kick off of the spring semester, our Dallas staff presented a deeper emphasis on the food literacy and food engagement program pillars of the Brighter Bites program.
Food Literacy and Fun Food Experiences Flourish in Dallas
Keyword/Tag: Dallas
Shipt to Join Brighter Bites in New Partnership
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?
Brighter Bites Wraps up Best Year Yet!
The year 2016 was big in every way for Brighter Bites. We worked with more families and more sites this year than ever before. We developed more recipes, hired more staff, and collaborated with more partners.
But here’s the big news! In 2016, Brighter Bites provided more produce to more families in one year than ever before! In fact, we distributed more than 5,000,000 pounds of produce to almost 20,000 families across more than 100 sites in Houston, Dallas, and Austin in 2016 alone!
That’s just one piece of news! Brighter Bites distributed more nutrition education materials in 2016 than in years past too — we passed out over 600,000 pieces of nutrition education material to our families this year!
And, Brighter Bites has given out more recipe samples this year than ever before too! Thousands of families have tasted more than 135,000 produce-based, kid-friendly, recipe samples developed and prepared by the Brighter Bites staff in 2016.
Brighter Bites would not be where we are today without the ongoing support of our partners and collaborators. Next year is going to be bigger and better! We can’t wait for 2017!
Brighter Bites Delivers Nearly 2,000,000 Pounds of Produce to Almost 8,000 Dallas Families in 2016
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.
Local Church Raises $$ for Brighter Bites Dallas
Parent volunteers of Lee A. McShan Jr. Elementary School give their time to bag fresh produce for the school’s 250 Brighter Bites families.
A big shout goes out to all the families at the Preston Hollow Presbyterian Church (PHPC) in Dallas who donated more than $1,750 to Brighter Bites in the month of November! Brighter Bites and the families at Lee A. McShan Jr. Elementary School, the Brighter Bites school closest to the church, are grateful for their support. Dalene Buhl, who works with McShan’s reading program, is responsible for recommending Brighter Bites to PHPC’s donation outreach committee, and we are grateful for her contagious enthusiasm about our organization. These funds will help support Brighter Bites at McShan Elementary School.
Brighter Bites Delivers in Dallas
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.
Brighter Bites Program Coordinator Honored at Ceremony in Galveston
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.
North Texas Giving Day is TODAY
Countless North Texans will give to nonprofit organizations today for North Texas Giving Day, the largest day of giving in the United States. Brighter Bites is asking you to consider making your donation today to us.
Why? Brighter Bites is creating communities of health through fresh food, nutrition education, and fun food experiences in North Texas neighborhoods that need it most.
And it’s working. Our research shows that families who participate in Brighter Bites are consuming more fruits and vegetables, cooking more often from scratch, and using nutritional labels when grocery shopping more often than families who don’t receive Brighter Bites.
Currently, we serve approximately 3,000 families at 15 schools in Dallas. We would love to increase that number, and we need your help to do it.
A contribution to Brighter Bites in any amount today will help our team continue to serve families like Angelina’s and Ana’s. Here’s how…
- $10 will provide 2 weeks of Brighter Bites to one of our families.
- $40 will supply a family with Brighter Bites for a full semester.
- And if you want to help that same family for an entire school year (16 weeks), then donate $80.
Please consider making a contribution to Brighter Bites TODAY to help us expand our program to include more families in the Dallas area.
You have until Midnight TODAY to go to our giving page and help raise money for our North Texas community!
Thank you!
Fueling up for Fall in the Metroplex
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 Dallas Participates in Largest Giving Day in the Nation
North Texas Giving Day is an online giving event for people across the nation (and the world!) to come together to raise as much money as possible for North Texas nonprofits on one day: September 22, 2016.
For the first time in seven years, Brighter Bites will be participating in this incredible event, said to be the largest giving day in the nation! North Texas Giving Day has pumped $119 million into the North Texas community. In 2015, $33 million was raised through more than 118,000 gifts benefiting 2,020 nonprofits.