One of my all-time favorite quotes is from the ever inspiring Dale Hayes in the world of childhood hunger and nutrition. “When students are listening to their hungry stomach they are not listening to their teachers.” This resonates. Think about when you get hungry, so hungry that it’s all you can think about. Imagine an 8 year old child sitting in class who didn’t have breakfast that morning, they may not have even had dinner or if they did it wasn’t much to speak of. All they can think of is when is lunch coming. Not because they are bored, or want to play, or just don’t want to sit in class anymore; because their little tummy will not stop grumbling and they know a full hot meal is waiting for them.
School breakfast helps to solve this problem. Many do not realize that school breakfast is part of the lunch program. The same one that offers free or reduced price meals to children also provides breakfast (and in some cases afterschool snack or dinner but we’ll save that for another day). Unfortunately many schools still do not support this program. Whether it be cost, labor, stigma, unsupportive faculty, or lack of initiative there are a host of excuses.
National School Breakfast Week allows us to thank those who work so hard to make sure no child is hungry in the morning and is ready to learn. After all, breakfast is the most important meal of the day isn’t it? NSBW also allows us to bring focus to the work that still needs to be done. We need to turn excuses into possibilities and help schools bring breakfast to more students on a daily basis. The importance of breakfast has been proved time and again through an infinite number of studies, there should not be a question or a reason to why it is not available to all our children every day in our nation’s public school system. Children in our country should not be going hungry.
For more inspiration I encourage you to watch this video: https://vimeo.com/195810067
You can take action to make school breakfast a reality! It only takes a minute to email your governor and and urge them to support breakfast programs that help connect more kids with the meals they need: http://bit.ly/2FE1SJa
Or join me and make donations to No Kid Hungry to help their mission: https://secure.nokidhungry.org/site/Donation2;jsessionid=00000000.app215b?df_id=14444&mfc_pref=T&14444.donation=form1&src=18XWH0000S0&_ga=2.33752865.1685853255.1520276327-691640603.1516723820&NONCE_TOKEN=B68A6AC99FBEE24A6CF8C858CC23E530
Multi-Passion Mama 