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Cooperative Extension Service Communications and Technology Department 3354 1000 E. University Ave. Laramie, WY 82071 (307) 766-6342 • fax (307) 766-3998 • www.uwyo.edu |
For Immediate Release
Story contacts:
Mary Kay Wardlaw: (307) 766-4147
Cindy Frederick: (307) 766-3878
Karen Davis: (307) 633-4223
Contact: Steven L. Miller, Senior Editor
Phone: (307) 766-6342
E-mail: slmiller@uwyo.edu
Archived News Site www.uwyo.edu/agadmin/news/news.htm
Date: 1/06/06
UW
nutrition program battles hunger in Wyoming homes
Wyoming senior citizens on fixed incomes now eat at the end of the month instead of going hungry.
Wyoming mothers no longer choose to not eat so their children have enough food.
The UW Cooperative Extension Service’s Cent$ible Nutrition Program (CNP) helps Food Stamp Program-eligible residents learn how to eat better for less and stretch their food stamp buying power.
Poverty and hunger still lurk in Wyoming, said Cindy Frederick of the CNP program, and Mary Kay Wardlaw, director of the program.
Through classes, in-home visits, and youth food nutrition education, the program enables families to boost food stamp power. “Maybe now the food stamps are covering all the food expenses, and they can use that $40 for medication,” said Frederick. “There are senior citizens who are choosing between eating and buying the medication they need. That $40 to them is a lot of money.”
That proved true for a class of 18 senior citizens Laramie County CNP educator Karen Davis taught for 18 weeks in Converse County. “Seniors are not our primary target audience – they only get a minimal amount of food stamp money,” she noted. “They live on a fixed income, and they told me they saved $15 a month in food stamp money when they learned how to manage food better. That $15 covered the last week of the month. Instead of not eating, they had food left over. It gave them such a feeling of empowerment and security. They have to live on $500 a month. None of us could do that, but they are forced to do that.”
The damage caused when a tornado scraped the community of Wright literally off the Wyoming landscape was horrible, yet there was an ironic silver lining for some. Campbell County CNP educator Lori Jones, who serves an average of 125 families a year, said the lives of her clients in Wright actually improved.
“The tornado raised their standard of living because whatever is brought in will be an improvement,” she noted. “There are mothers trying to get by on $6 to $7 an hour. We work with those mothers to try to get them to feel like they are doing a good job of feeding their children.”
Campbell County is one of the wealthiest in Wyoming, yet poverty and hunger are entrenched there, said Jones. “There is a big disparity between the haves and have-nots,” she added.
“We don’t have out-and-out slums in Wyoming, but we have two to three families living in one apartment or living in one home. It is not us hiding poverty as much as people in poverty have gotten pretty good at hiding it.”
For the reporting year that ended Sept. 30, about 19,583 adults were presented one-time CNP lessons, and more than 15,582 youths participated in after-school programs, summer camps or in-class programs.
Statistically, the program has saved an average of $43 per month for clients and their families, an average of $522 a year. Davis said some families have saved much more.
“We have documented proof of families spending $600 a month before the program and $400 a month after,” she noted. “They can buy more food with the food stamps they get or with the resources they have.”
CNP received the national Leadership, Innovation and Nutrition Collaboration (LINC) Excellence in Practice award in September from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service. Program success stories are at www.uwyo.edu/centsible/9.html.
Ten percent of Wyoming’s 492,000 residents (2004 Census figure) – about 49,000 people – live in poverty. About 115,000 of the state’s residents are youths ages 17 and younger. Of those, about 13 percent live in poverty, or about 15,000, according to information from the Economic Research Service of the USDA. “To me, that’s a scary thought,” commented Davis.
About 10 to 20 percent of the high school at-risk youths Davis works with claim that school lunch is their only meal.
In surveys of public school classes with as many as 20 students, three or four say that lunch the day before was their last meal, she said. “I have had kids in those classes who live in cars,” she added.
“People think that doesn’t happen in Wyoming,” she noted. “Or ‘That doesn’t happen in small communities. That doesn’t happen in this country where we live in a land of plenty.’ But to those of us working in the trenches, teaching them what to eat and finding out when they ate their last meal, we see it on a daily basis. They don’t have anything to eat and don’t know what to eat.”
CNP includes up to 15 lessons such as Being a Super Shopper, Supermarket Persuasion, Breads and Cereals: The Energy Connection, and Fruits and Vegetables: The Vitamin Connection.
“Our mission is to help people learn how to eat better for less,” said Davis. “Within that, we want them to use safe food handling techniques and how to manage their money better.”
Educators provide demonstrations and recipes out of the CNP cookbook and how to use food from the Food Bank of the Rockies. “It is not a cooking class but nutrition information,” she said.
Participants learn how to plan meals and menus and how to choose healthy foods. “Because of their habits, they are not used to buying nutrient-dense foods that require them to do a lot of labor. They are used to convenience food,” added Jones. “We try to help them see that if they spend their money on getting more bang for the buck, they save hunger and save money. Some didn’t know how to shop, menu plan, or how to cook.”
Jones focuses on menu planning and involving children in the process. “We teach them to cook with their children,” she noted. “We try to have the mothers see they are the gatekeepers for their family’s nutrition. The families will only be as strong as the mothers are.”
Said Davis, “This has got to be the most rewarding job I’ve been in. When you give people a little bit of empowerment, it brings up their self-esteem. There is nothing like having a mom and dad who are a couple weeks into the program come back and say, ‘Guess what? We have three meals. We have breakfast now.’ You see the kids change, see the house picked up, the kids have had a bath and are eager to talk to you. To see them take care of themselves and their families, that is reward enough.”
On the Web: http://www.uwyo.edu/centsible/index.html
http://www.ers.usda.gov/Data/povertyrates/PovListpct.asp?Longname=Wyoming&ST=WY&SF=1A
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