A Nice Holiday Gift for School Kids Everywhere

The Santa I know typically operates in the currency of choo choo trains, gumdrops, and candy canes, but this holiday season, it seems he’s branched out. Kids around the country received an early and much-needed gift this December in the form of — you guessed it — broccoli and green beans. Okay, maybe that's not what you guessed, and maybe it's not in a literal vegetable form, but on December 13, President Obama signed the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act. Like the title suggests, the new law provides kids with healthier, more nutritious food options at school and gives free lunch access to a larger number of children in need.

Santa-belly jokes aside, childhood obesity is an escalating problem in the U.S. One in every three American children is now considered overweight or obese. Seventeen million children live in food insecure households. This law came as great news for anti-hunger activists and health advocates all over the county.
 
With the passage of this law, it is also an opportune time to showcase a few online tools, techniques, and communications strategies that some pretty cool nonprofits (some of them our clients) are using to amplify the voice of the healthy kids movement.

• PreventObesity.net: This site was developed by my Forum One comrades. It’s a great example of how web technology and online tools are changing the game for childhood health advocates across the country. The site is a toolkit of free online services for child health advocates, including a map of the obesity prevention movement, customizable widgets, cell phone tools, and blogger outreach services. Site visitors can sign up as leaders in the movement or add themselves to the map. The site highlights and shares successes of the movement and uncovers areas of need on the road to their goals of grassroots network building and policy change.
• Alliance for a Healthier Generation: The Alliance offers some pretty cool tools for parents, kids, and schools to promote healthy eating habits and exercise. Their Healthy Schools Builder provides online school health training webinars, toolkits for implementing best practices, and a database of school health grants. They have also established a campaign of kids and teenagers called EmpowerME. The movement’s site is a community of young people who share their stories, can access toolkits to transform their schools, and can lead or host panel discussions and forums. EmpowerME is a great educational and motivating tool for young supporters of the healthy kids movement.
• Obama’s Apps for Healthy Kids: This mobile app competition is part of Michelle Obama’s "Let’s Move!" campaign. Contestants created and submitted software tools and games using the USDA Nutrition Dataset and were required to incorporate one or more health-related concepts, such as balancing physical activity and food intake, choosing lean sources of protein, and identifying and consuming proper food portion sizes. Zisboombah’s free online tool “Pick Chow!” won first place in the tool category. Pic Chow! allows children to create meals by dragging and dropping foods onto their virtual plate. Check out Pick Chow! and the whole list of other winners.

These innovative online tools and communities, in combination with the recent policy change, make for a very happy holiday and a hopeful (and healthier) new year.