Keyword/Tag: Houston

Press Release: Brighter Bites wins Impact Award

Posted on August 6, 2018 by -

Media Contact:
Stefanie Cousins
Stefanie.Cousins@brighterbites.org
919-360-4156

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Nutrition Education Nonprofit Honored With Prestigious Award from Partnership for a Healthier America

National nonprofit Brighter Bites wins Impact Award from organization creating solutions to ensure children will live healthier lives

Houston, TX (August 6, 2018) — Partnership for a Healthier America (PHA), the nonpartisan nonprofit creating solutions to ensure that all children and young adults will live healthier lives announced today that Brighter Bites will receive its annual Impact Award at the September 27 gala in Washington, DC. The PHA Impact Award is presented each year to a group or individual working at the community level to help build a healthier future.

“We are proud to present Brighter Bites with this year’s Impact Award for its service to local communities across the country,” said PHA President and CEO Nancy E. Roman. “Brighter Bites is helping to create access and instill habits around fresh food that has life-long health benefits.”

Brighter Bites was co-founded by Lisa Helfman and Dr. Shreela Sharma in Houston, Texas. Since its founding in 2012, Brighter Bites has donated over 17 million pounds of fresh produce, and 100,000s of nutrition education materials to over 53,000 families struggling to access or afford nutritious food. Brighter Bites programs and nutrition education materials are currently delivered through six programs based in Houston, Dallas, Austin, Southwestern Florida, Washington, DC, and New York City.

The PHA Impact Award recognizes organizations that demonstrate a measurable impact on communities disproportionately facing obesity. Researchers at the UTHealth School of Public Health found that students and families participating in Brighter Bites programs significantly decreased the amount of sugars consumed and increased their intake of fresh fruits and vegetables.

“We know that when families have access to nutritious food and better information, they opt for better health choices,” said Brighter Bites founder Lisa Helfman. “I’m so proud to accept this award on behalf of our incredible team who is working tirelessly to ensure that more kids and families across the country have access to both healthy produce and the nutrition know-how to prepare it.”

Brighter Bites was among four other finalists this year, including The National Fitness Foundation, OPEN – Online Physical Education Network, SuperChefs, and The Walking Classroom Institute.

Brighter Bites will receive the award at Partnership for a Healthier America’s gala in Washington, DC, on September 27. Brighter Bites will share this distinction with The Walking Classroom, which enhances students’ physical, mental, and academic health through exercise.

About Brighter Bites:
Brighter Bites is a nonprofit that creates communities of health through fresh food with the goal of changing behavior among children and their families to prevent obesity and achieve long-term health. Brighter Bites is an evidence-based, multi-component elementary school, preschool, and summer camp program that utilizes reliable access to fruits and vegetables, nutrition education, and consistent exposure to recipes and messages that feature fresh food. Since 2012, Brighter Bites has provided more than 17 million pounds of produce and 100,000s of nutrition education materials to more than 53,000 families and teachers in Houston, Dallas, Austin, New York City, the Washington, D.C. Metropolitan area, and Southwest Florida. To learn more about Brighter Bites visit www.brighterbites.org.

Staff Spotlight: Emily Kelley

Posted on June 14, 2018 by -

Meet Emily!

Emily Kelley is Program Director for Brighter Bites in Houston, TX. Emily joined Brighter Bites in its early days, working with the program as early as 2013 as an Americorps VISTA before becoming a permanent member and leader of the team. Emily was inspired by the idea of building a program from the ground up that allowed her to share her passion for healthy eating with others. Emily loves that her job requires constant problem solving and leading others towards a common goal.

Emily Kelley (center), enjoys Zumba with Brighter Bites staff during a team meeting

Emily grew up in South Carolina, where she was involved in volleyball and theater. Now that she lives in Houston, she loves going to Miller Outdoor Theatre from time to time to catch a show or music act.

When she’s not on the job, you might find Emily enjoying the outdoors with her dog, an English Pointer named Lyle, climbing, camping, or visiting a national park. She also loves meeting up with friends for happy hour and exploring Houston’s diverse food scene. You can also often find Emily spending time in her kitchen, where she might be making her favorite Brighter Bites recipe, our Put it on Anything Pesto.

Thank you Emily for your stellar leadership!

Cheers for Champions: Principal De La Rosa

Posted on June 14, 2018 by -

In “Cheers for Champions,” a new special feature of The Brighter Byte newsletter, Brighter Bites turns the spotlight to teachers, administrators, parents, volunteers, and other shining stars who have made outstanding contributions to our program.

Today we celebrate Principal Diana De La Rosa of Northline Elementary School in Houston, TX. We are so lucky to call Principal De La Rosa a great friend to our program, and now… a champion!

Principal De La Rosa (second from right), surrounded by Brighter Bites staff and parent volunteers

Since Brighter Bites began programming at Northline last fall, Principal De La Rosa has been extremely enthused about making health a fully integrated feature of her school. In addition to coordinating with Physical Education coaches, counselors, and parent volunteers to make sure all three pillars of Brighter Bites were executed to perfection, Principal De La Rosa arranged to put weekly CATCH “MVP” bulletin boards up around the school to highlight how different teachers stay healthy and inspire her young students to follow suit.

Principal De La Rosa also implemented a school garden and empowered parents to take ownership by developing a watering schedule. Her vision for the garden is to provide half of the harvest to the parents paying into the garden co-op and the other half to the school’s cafeteria staff to make healthy sides for students’ lunch trays. The garden ensures Northline will have continued access to fresh produce.

At the end of the school day you may find Principal De La Rosa teaching cooking classes out of the demo kitchen in her office area that Brighter Bites recipes. On Brighter Bites days, you will always find her engaging with families at distribution, trying the recipe sample, and encouraging all parents and students to do the same!

One week when Brighter Bites was short on volunteers, Principal De La Rosa rolled up her sleeves and jumped in to help bag produce for our families. She then came to distribution that same day, where she asked each parent to try the sample and encouraged them to volunteer.

Thanks to Principal De La Rosa’s passion and continuous support of Brighter Bites, her teachers taught all of the CATCH lessons at Northline that are recommended in the CATCH program. We are so excited to return to Northline Elementary School next year to continue building communities of health through fresh food with Principal De La Rosa and her loyal army of parent volunteers!

Cheers to Principal De La Rosa, and cheers to ALL Brighter Bites champions!

Houston’s Diverse Food Culture

Posted on February 5, 2018 by -

By Isabel Herrick

Cummings Elementary School sits alongside South Kirkwood Boulevard in the Alief School District of Houston. On any given day, you might see a sign out front with messages for the kids and parents. My favorite phrase was “Thank you Tortilleria San Luis.” This phrase points to the strong Mexican and Central American influence on Houston and its food culture. But the languages spoken in this area of Houston are not limited to English and Spanish. If you look at the Cummings Elementary School webpage, you will see translations for a number of other languages, including Chinese, Vietnamese, Arabic, Burmese, Urdu, and Yoruba.

In fact, the International District of Houston is only a few minutes’ drive from Cummings Elementary. Perhaps you might have driven through this area before without realizing it. One obvious indicator is the abundance of street names printed in Mandarin Chinese instead of English. And if you are looking for a bite to eat, you will find food from regions all over the world.

The presence of such an ethnically diverse population brings with it a diverse food culture: a culture with different cooking traditions, histories, and agricultural practices. My experience working as Brighter Bites intern with the enthusiastic and eager Cummings Elementary students for several weeks was amazing and enriching. In a city of over 2 million residents, our collective gastronomical history is vastly diverse; food has always been a way to embrace our different backgrounds and, at the same time, it can be a powerful tool to bring people together.

After talking to some of the elementary school teachers during lunchtime, I learned that, for most of the kids, their favorite aspect of the Brighter Bites experience is bringing a recipe card home each Tuesday to share with their family. For the students, the ability to share this new healthful information is empowering.

It can sometimes take a leap of faith to try a food that is unfamiliar and or prepared by a stranger. A huge shout out goes to the Cummings elementary school students for being super brave and for their overwhelming willingness to try the Brighter Bites samples. Some of the favorites were the Pumpkin Spice and Everything Nice Smoothie and the Popping Pomegranate Salsa.

Isabel Herrick is pursuing a degree in environmental studies. She completed a Brighter Bites internship in Houston, TX in the fall of 2017.

Back to School in HOU

Posted on January 9, 2018 by -

A week before Brighter Bites was scheduled to begin Fall 2017 programming in Houston, TX, Hurricane Harvey made landfall, devastating the Houston community and much of the Texas coast. Everyday life became a surreal experience as the city came together to rescue each other, rebuild the city, and keep moving forward. Brighter Bites put our regular programming on hold to better support our families by delivering pre-assembled bags of produce to elementary schools.

As recovery continues across the city, we are excited to be back in our  schools for regular programming. Catch a few snaps from our first day back at Jefferson Elementary School!

 

Produce Fun with Ms. Garcia!

Posted on October 27, 2017 by -

Connecting new foods to fun experiences is a great way to encourage children to try unfamiliar foods, especially when it comes to produce items that children often shy away from.

Brighter Bites teachers are taking the fun food experience to heart and putting it into action with their Brighter Bites produce. Ms. Gaby Garcia, a Kinder Bilingual Teacher at Betty Best Elementary School in Houston, TX thought up a fun experience for her students that incorporated her Brighter Bites produce, riddles, a magic box, and sentence stems. Take a peek!

Ms. Garcia’s Produce Circle Map Game

#1. Ms. Garcia puts the fruits and vegetables in a “magic box”, and before pulling them out one by one, she tells her students a riddle to help them guess the item.

#2. After 7 seconds of thinking time, students “pair and share” with a partner before raising their hand and sharing their answer with the class using the sentence stem “I think it’s a ___”.

#3. After hearing a few answers, Ms. Garcia pulls out the item to a drumroll and students confirm their predictions.

#4. Next, students share ways in which they use the items at home.

#5. Ms. Garcia prepares some of the items for students to taste, like cucumber with lemon, peach, carrot, green onions and lime (a fun one to observe!).

#6. Students each choose one of the food items to draw and put it on a circle map for display in the Kinder hallway.

Ms. Garcia additionally brought out homemade sweet potato fries to share with her students the day after the activity. What a success!

“This was such a fun activity for us all,” said Ms. Garcia. “Students were engaged and totally fascinated by the riddles. I was happy to find that most students knew every item in the bag and could share a way they used the item at home. The best part of it all was being able to share the delicious and nutritious food items as we sat in a circle and talked about them.”

Way to go Ms. Garcia for crafting such a fun food experience!

Brighter Bites on the Radio

Posted on October 11, 2017 by -

If you thought you heard a familiar voice on the radio a few weeks ago, you were right! On September 26, Brighter Bites’ founder Lisa Helfman made a radio appearance on KPFT Houston 90.1 to talk about Brighter Bites’ origin and impact with Eco-Ology hosts Pat Greer and HC Clark. Pat was excited to learn about the Brighter Bites model, calling our work the “best, grandest, most exciting definition of sustainability.”

Lisa answered Pat and HC’s questions about Brighter Bites’ beginnings, explaining how her family’s participation in a food co-op changed her sons’ eating habits and sparked the idea that the eating habits of underprivileged children could be changed with an increased exposure to fresh produce. She described her very first brainstorming session at an NBA basketball game and how the invitation to work with students at one KIPP school grew into a relationship with produce distributors and nutrition educators and quickly become the Brighter Bites we know today.

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Pat and HC asked questions ranging from government support to classroom impact and how Brighter Bites is changing food desert communities. When probed about Brighter Bites’ relationship to public health, Lisa answered that “somehow as a society we have forgotten to make food and healthy eating a priority for health. If we can get produce out and blanket the world with healthier food, people just start picking it up on their own.”

Lisa continued to describe how Brighter Bites is aiming to change eating habits everywhere by increasing demand for fresh produce and thus its availability. “I’m out here to have a national conversation about what this change in eating can do,” she explained.

Pat and HC led an incredible conversation about access to produce in the US and what Brighter Bites is doing about it. At the end of the interview, Pat nailed Lisa’s sentiments about food waste in the US: “There’s not a hunger problem, there’s a distribution problem.”

To listen to the full conversation, tune in here and select the Tuesday, September 26 episode.

 

Brighter Bites is Right on Target in Houston and Dallas!

Posted on August 16, 2017 by -

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This summer Brighter Bites teamed up with Target to bring our not-so-secret formula to thousands of families in Houston and Dallas. We were so excited about this partnership, we changed the design of our bags for the summer to include the popular Target bullseye alongside our cute Brighter Bites apple. Notice how the reds work together? This was a designer’s dream come true!

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Texas may be hot, but that didn’t stop our volunteers from bagging hundreds of thousands of pounds of produce this summer! In Houston and Dallas combined, we bagged and distributed nearly 300,000 pounds of produce. That’s equal to approximately 835,000 servings of fruits and veggies!

Fruits and veggies are an essential part of a healthy lifestyle. The abundance of fresh fruits and vegetables available during the summer season makes maintaining a healthy diet easy! Eating in season is not only budget friendly, but fruits and veggies harvested in their peak season retain their maximum vitamins and nutrients, making them the better choice for your health!

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This summer our team gave out a wide variety of delicious and nutritious produce, including cantaloupe, strawberries, peaches, corn, and green beans! Cantaloupe has high water content helping you stay hydrated all day long. Strawberries are not only a sweet treat; they also fight against cancer and aging. Peaches boost your immune system and aid in maintaining skin and eye health. Corn improves digestive health and helps lower LDL cholesterol levels. Green beans are a great source of vitamin K promoting healthy bones. These are just a few examples of the plentiful benefits our families enjoyed from our colorful summer produce! Remember to “eat the rainbow” to receive a variety of nutrients!