Gov. Bill Ritter today celebrated the first anniversary of his historic Campaign to End Childhood Hunger by awarding cash prizes to schools that showed the highest increase in participation in the school breakfast program and releasing a five-year action plan.
Accomplishments of the Campaign to End Childhood Hunger include:
· Serving nearly 1 million free meals this summer to children at community sites across Colorado. This represents a 26% increase compared to last year and the largest number of summer meals ever served in Colorado.
· Serving more than 130,000 additional free and reduced-price breakfasts this October compared to a year ago during the School Breakfast Challenge.
“Thank you to all of the schools and community sites across Colorado who joined our campaign to provide healthy meals to more children who need them,” said Gov. Ritter. “Providing nutritious meals is an important part of creating an education system that helps all of our children thrive and succeed. In the last year, we have made significant progress toward the goal of ending childhood hunger by developing strong partnerships, increasing use of existing programs and not breaking the bank. We have shown that ending childhood hunger is an achievable goal.”
Gov. Ritter and Lt. Gov. Barbara O’Brien launched the Colorado Campaign to End Childhood Hunger in November 2009 with partner non-profits Hunger Free Colorado and Share Our Strength. The campaign included three goals for the first year: increasing the number of children participating in the summer meals program, increasing the number of children participating in the school breakfast program and creating an action plan to end childhood hunger in Colorado by 2015. The last year saw tremendous progress.
This summer, more than 970,000 free meals were served at 315 community sites across the state, representing 200,000 more meals served than a year ago.
Nearly 100 schools participated in the inaugural School Breakfast Challenge, a friendly contest to encourage schools to increase use of the free and reduced-price breakfast program. The participating schools reported providing more than 130,000 additional breakfasts in October compared to the same period in 2009.
Today, Gov. Ritter awarded prizes to the top three schools during a ceremony at the Colorado Department of Education:
· Beaver Valley Elementary School from the Brush School District RE-2J received the Bronze Prize for increasing their breakfast program by 77.81%.
· Alsup Elementary School in the Adams 14 School District received the Silver Prize for increasing their breakfast program by 78.59%.
· Centennial High School from the Pueblo City School District received the Gold Prize for increasing their breakfast program participation by 81.91%.
Also at the event, Gov. Ritter and partner organizations unveiled the new 5-year action plan that identifies 10 concrete steps to move Colorado toward ending childhood hunger by 2015. The report can be found here.
More information about the Colorado Campaign to End Childhood Hunger can be found at http://www.hungerfreecolorado.org/The_Campaign.html.
