Back to School: Navigating the COVID-19 Pandemic
“It Takes a Community”
Back to school in 2020 looks different than 2019, that’s for certain.
While e4c’s School Nutrition Program continues to offer healthy, nutritious lunches to students in schools, the delivery method
doesn’t resemble the winding lunch lines filled with students!
Instead, the halls are eerily quiet as our Nutrition Support Workers wheel their carts down each hallway, dropping bins off at each classroom, where teachers hand them out.
Each food group is packaged into a plastic bag, and each child receives one of each food option, which are handed out using tongs.
A typical morning meal at the school might include a bag of apple slices, a bag with a muffin, a yogurt tube, and a bag with a hardboiled egg. Each meal is still prepared fresh, on site daily by Nutrition Support Workers who are often parents, caregivers, or members of the school’s community.
Morning meals often see a circulation of different fruits, like grapes and watermelon when available. If we’ve learned anything from previous school years, it’s that the students accessing the program are adventurous eaters, and always eager to try new things!
Each meal costs just $2.50 per day, per student. This year, e4c is providing nutritional supports to students across 38 Edmonton area school, and continue to offer selections from each nutritional food group, which are prepared fresh on site daily. A fan favorite lunch item continues to be the Taco Wrap, closely followed by a Pizza Sub!
Interested in seeing a sample menu? Click here!
“A number of our school’s registrations have doubled, or even tripled for breakfast!” – Leanna, e4c School Nutrition Coordinator
Supplementary Food Package Program Wraps Up & Supports over 27,000 People
During the school’s shutdown from April – August, e4c and our partners with the Edmonton Public School Division and Edmonton Catholic School Division distributed over 6790 supplementary food packages to students and families experiencing food insecurity, impacting 27,839 people.
These supplementary food packages were prepared at the Edmonton Convention Centre to respect social distancing, and distributed by school division transport teams. Each package contained essential staples like carrots, potatoes, apples, beans, and bread products.
On average, the wholesale price of each supplementary package was $70, with a comparative retail price of $170. Each household also received an e4c cookbook, containing cooking and preparation instructions for ingredients like dried beans, and a variety of healthy, filling meals that students could prepare with their parents or caregivers.
Interested in supporting the School Nutrition Program?
Donate online by clicking here. ATB Cares will match all donations by 15% of every dollar donated – so your donation goes further!
Stay tuned for more updates as our School Based programs settle in to what’s sure to be our most interesting year yet!