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food (13)

Summer Meals for Children

Posted by Lee Cruz on June 24, 2020 at 12:50pm

Summer Meals Public School Sites in New Haven. If anyone is aware of a similar list for other towns please post so we can circulate it. No children need be going hungry.


These sites are open Monday through Friday, 9 a.m. to 11 a.m.

Barnard School - 170 Derby Avenue
Beecher School - 100 Jewell Street
Benjamin Jepson - 15 Lexington Avenue
Betsy Ross - 150 Kimberly Avenue
Bishop Woods - 1481 Quinnipiac Avenue
Katherine Brennan - 200 Wilmont Road
Clinton School - 293 Clinton Avenue
Columbus School - 255 Blatchley Street
Fair Haven School - 164 Grand Avenue
Hooker Middle School - 691 Whitney Avenue
High School in the Community - 175 Water Street
James Hillhouse High School - 480 Sherman Parkway
John Daniels School - 569 Congress Avenue
John Martinez School - 100 James Street
King Robinson School - 150 Fournier Street
Lincoln Bassett School - 130 Bassett Street
Mauro Sheridan School - 191 Fountain Street
Nathan Hale School - 480 Townsend Avenue
Roberto Clemente School - 360 Columbus Avenue
Sound School - 60 South Water Street
Strong School - 130 Orchard Street
Troup School - 259 Edgewood Avenue
Truman - 114 Truman Street
West Rock Academy - 311 Valley Street
Wexler Grant - 55 Foote Street
Wilbur Cross - 181 Mitchell Drive

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Update on the New Haven EMERGENCY FOOD DISTRIBUTION prgrams

Posted by Lee Cruz on March 13, 2020 at 2:00pm

  • New Haven Public Schools Food Service Will Provide Meals to City Youth During Public Schools Closure

     

    NEW HAVEN, Conn. – The New Haven Public Schools Food Service Department will begin serving “Grab and Go” Breakfast and lunch meals on Monday March 16, 2020 during the closure of the public schools in response to the spread of COVID-19.

     

    The Food Service Department be serving breakfast and lunch at 37 schools sites throughout the city.

     

    Meal distribution sites will be open for breakfast and lunch pick up Monday through Friday between 9:00 AM and 12:00 PM. The Food Service Department will be distributing breakfast and lunch meals for the duration of the public schools’ closure due to the growing concern of student exposure to the novel coronavirus (COVID-19).

     

    NHPS Food Service will distribute meals from either the front entry foyer or the bus entry.

     

    In order to maintain social distancing, participants are encouraged to pick up meals from the school site most convenient to their home. Students may pick up a meal at their local school so long as they are enrolled at any closed school.

     

    Meals are available for school students 18 years of age and younger.

     

    Additional information is available at www.newhavenct.gov and www.nhps.net. Information is also available Monday through Friday 7:30 AM-3:30 PM at (475) 220-1610.

     

    Below is the full list of school sites where Breakfast and lunch pick up will be available. Click here to view a map.

Meal Distribution Sites

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New Haven EMERGENCY FOOD UPDATE: Free school food should be available starting Monday (public info will be shared by the city about where/how to get food) - United Way is coordinating local volunteers, The CT Food Bank is keeping a more up to date list of which emergency food pantries and soup kitchens are open. If you want to donate food/money or need food check the link below, and call the pantries to see if they are open. Also, a flyer in english and spanish is linked on that page. Reminder that senior centers are closed.

https://www.getconnectednewhaven.com/services/food

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Get Food in New Haven

Posted by Lee Cruz on October 3, 2019 at 9:18am

Get Connected New Haven, a one-stop connection to resources for all of the residents in New Haven, Connecticut!

Get Connected New Haven is a continually updated, comprehensive database of services provided by the City, non-profit and community organizations for New Haven residents. It is available in multiple languages. 

If you need food or if you know of someone in need of food in New Haven go to this website for information and services.

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Find and Share Information about Summer Meal Programs Here

Posted by Lee Cruz on June 26, 2017 at 12:54pm

As the school year ends let us not forget that it also means the end of school breakfast and lunch for many children in our community. Summer Meals are free, nutritious, meals and snacks that are provided to kids and teens,18 years of age and younger, throughout the summer when school is out. Find and Share Information about Summer Meal Programs Here: http://www.endhungerct.org/summer-meals/

Let's not let any child go hungry in our community for lack of information. Thank you.

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Hiring: Operations Manager, New Haven Land Trust

Posted by Justin Elicker on July 20, 2015 at 4:58pm

Position Description

Operations Manager, New Haven Land Trust

 

Our Mission

The New Haven Land Trust promotes the appreciation and preservation of natural resources in New Haven for the benefit and education of the community. We do this through land conservation, community gardening, and environmental education.


Our Culture

The Land Trust is a rapidly growing non-profit with a strong, community-focused mission.  We harness the strengths of community members, volunteers, employees and our other organizational partnerships in a positive, yet dedicated way.  The Land Trust’s approach is one of “can do”, where staff and volunteers are encouraged to be persistent, think outside of the box to confront challenges, and take ownership over the organization’s ongoing projects and mission.  If you are someone who doesn’t give up after hearing “no”, who puts all your energy and passion into the projects you implement, and who enjoys working collaboratively with a diverse group of individuals, then you will fit in at the Land Trust.

 

Position

The New Haven Land Trust seeks an Operations Manager with strong organizational skills and a passion for community and environment, who can both manage the administrative tasks of the organization and play a supporting role to the many ongoing projects and strategic initiatives that the Land Trust is implementing. 

 

Work Commitment                                           

The Operations Manager will work 40 hours per week and will report directly to the Executive Director.

 

Compensation

$40,000/year with benefits.

 

Primary responsibilities of the Operations Manager will be:

Bookkeeping: This includes recording financial transactions and reconciling monthly statements, creating financial reports, making bank deposits, and managing accounts receivable and payable.

 

Office systems: Develop, strengthen and maintain office systems that ensure that key information is effectively recorded, filed and organized, office communication systems are in place, and a sufficient inventory of supplies is on hand.

 

Database management: Manage the Land Trust’s donor, volunteer and contact lists.

 

Outreach and communications: Assist with design of the Land Trust’s communication strategy.  Keep the Land Trust’s social media platforms – Facebook, Twitter, website and email – active and alive with current information and notices.  Assist with design of brochures and outreach material.

 

Events planning: Spearhead the planning and execution of Land Trust meetings and fundraisers such as our Annual Meeting and Fall Fundraiser.

 

Ensure the smooth running of office procedures: Triage incoming phone and email communications, order supplies, maintain an effective filing system.

 

Grant writing: Draft, compile and process grant applications for ongoing and future Land Trust programs. 

 

Liaison and Representative: Assist with coordination, attend and in some cases lead various stakeholder meetings including both internal and external meetings.

 

Responsibilities will vary with specific tasks assigned as needed and to address the changing needs of the organization. 

 

Ideal Skills and Qualities

The Operations Manager must demonstrate the following skills, experience, and expertise:

Strong organizational and financial skills

Candidates must be highly reliable with a keen sense of responsibility. They must bring a can-do attitude to their work, with a creative approach to solving problems.  This includes an ability to multi-task while maintaining strict attention to detail and work well under pressure. Candidates must also have experience in keeping financial records and maintaining a tight financial management system.

Excellent project management skills

Proven track record in setting project objectives and timelines, managing tasks against a project plan, and providing insightful evaluation following completion. Ability to manage multiple project components and make adjustments in response to changing conditions.

Strong communication and interpersonal skills

This includes oral and writing skills and an ability to relate to and communicate effectively with people of diverse backgrounds and styles. Experience running meetings, giving presentations, developing and executing marketing and communications strategies are all highly desired. Ability in Spanish language is a plus.

Experience in managing office systems. 

Including ease with managing documents in Google Docs and Dropbox; facility with Adobe, and Microsoft Office Suite.  Expertise in managing database systems, and in promoting through social media platforms is also required. Bookkeeping software experience is also highly desired.

New Haven Knowledge

Knowledge of New Haven’s diverse neighborhoods and in particular New Haven’s food system and environmental arena is highly desired. 

Passion for environmental and food system issues is required. 

 

Please send cover letter and resume by August 7, 2015 to justin.elicker@newhavenlandtrust.org. Please include “Operations Manager” in the subject line.

New Haven Land Trust is an "equal opportunity employer." New Haven Land Trust will not discriminate in employment, recruitment, advertisements for employment, compensation, termination, upgrading, promotions, and other conditions of employment against any employee or job applicant on the basis of race, creed, color, national origin, sex, gender expression, or sexual orientation.

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New Haven Farms: Linking Health Center Patients Directly to the Farm, for Nutrition Education and Access to Healthy Foods

Posted by Madison Breuer on August 11, 2015 at 1:38pm
Originally published in: Migrant Clinicians Network: The Migrant Health News SourceStreamlineVolume 21, Issue 2 – Summer 2015 (pgs 4-5)Author: Claire Hutkins Seda, Writer, Migrant Clinicians Network, and Managing Editor, Streamline"Once we got the health center going, we started stocking food in the center pharmacy and distributing food — like drugs — to the people. A variety of officials got very nervous and said, ‘You can’t do that.’ We said, ‘Why not?’ They said, ‘It’s a health center pharmacy, and it’s supposed to carry drugs for the treatment of disease.’ And we said, ‘The last time we looked in the book, the specific therapy for malnutrition was food." - Geiger, Jack. The Unsteady March. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine, 48, 1-9.In 2009, Carmen Gomez* of New Haven, Connecticut was diagnosed with diabetes.But, because she was diagnosed at Fair Haven Community Health Center (FHCHC), what happened next was far from typical: Gomez was prescribed food — plus time on the farm for growing food and attending nutrition and cooking classes. She was contacted a week after her diagnosis by Rebecca Kline, then with FHCHC’s diabetes prevention program (DPP), who brought her out to New Haven Farms, an urban farm with educational components down the street from FHCHC. “I would water the plants, and do some weeding. I would work with cilantro, onions, kale, cherry tomatoes, big tomatoes... I would typically spend a couple of hours there,” several times a week, Gomez said. Six years later, she’s still an active participant. Every Monday, Gomez and others enrolled in the DPP receive cooking and nutrition education on the farm, after an hour or more of farming. The instruction includes seasonally-adjusted cooking strategies, and nutrition and lifestyle education. The patients’ entire families are invited. After the hour-long educational component, participants eat the meal they prepared together- er, and then bring home enough servings of vegetables and fruit from the farm for every member of their household for the week — meaning, lots of produce — plus, recipes for the harvest.“I feel that my life has changed in many ways. I am more active and have not increased in weight,” Gomez states. Not only is her diabetes stable, “it’s gone,” she exclaims. She also says she’s seen a huge difference in her family, who are also invited out to the farm, to work, learn, cook, and eat. “They have seen their mom stay active and eat better and be happy,” she said. She is eating more vegetables now, and she says, “I believe I am passing on a better diet to my family.”IT’S ACCESS PLUS EDUCATION…In 1965, Jack Geiger, the father of the health center movement, began “prescribing” food from a local cooperative farm in the Mississippi Delta to his patients suffering from malnutrition. Fifty years later, the approach still has advocates. Many of the health problems that plague the underserved population of the US – diabetes, obesity, high cholesterol, some cancers – can be traced to a lack of availability of healthy foods and a dearth of nutrition and cooking education. And yet, FHCHC may be one of the country’s few health centers – perhaps the only health center – currently “prescribing” food by having direct, concrete links between the health center and a local farm.Now, new research signals that the approach may be more than just novel. Two new studies on food deserts – urban areas where it’s difficult to purchase healthy, fresh food – show that providing access to healthy foods like fresh fruits and vegetables did not significantly affect consumption of healthy foods, meaning, although a market in the community finally featured cucumbers and apples, the nearby residents didn’t end up buying more vegetables or fruit than they normally did. Their food buying habits stayed the same, in a New York Times article about the studies, Jessie Handbury, an author of one of the papers, concluded that “improving people’s diets will require both making food accessible and affordable and also changing people’s perceptions and habits about diet and health.”A HAVEN FOR HEALTHY FOOD…Over at New Haven Farms, in the Fair Haven neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut, Rebecca Kline, who is now the Executive Director of the project, responded to the article with glee. “The article describes exactly why, at New Haven Farms, we provide both access to [healthy] foods, and [to] education,” she said. New Haven Farms’ main site is located in a food desert, but the program provides more than just access to produce, Kline contends. This is how it works: Practitioners at FHCHC prescribe time at the farm for a medical condition by filling gout a referral form within the electronic medical record of the patient. Patients are brought out to the farm to participate in food growing and harvesting, which is matched with nutrition and lifestyle education, to equip patients of FHCHC and their families to better their food behaviors. The two innovations – connection to the health center, and the inclusion of education – are the key difference between New Haven Farms and other community farm projects, says Kline. The resulting robust program is a model for community health centers looking for an alternative method to combat diet-related health issues like diabetes and high cholesterol.BEGINNINGS…New Haven Farms was born out of a partnership between FHCHC and Chabaso Bakery, a large East Coast bakery with a New Haven commercial bakery. The owner of Chabaso, Charles Negaro and his wife, Nancy Dennett turned an adjacent vacant lot on the bakery’s grounds into a community garden for employees about ten years ago — but it went underutilized. At the same time, FHCHC was launching a new DPP for their low-income, mostly Hispanic patient population. The program was translated from the National Institutes of Health’s Diabetes Prevention Program curriculum, after which FHCHC added innovative components like cooking classes and family-based interventions, said Kline.Just as FHCHC was developing their DPP, Negaro and Dennett approached FHCHC to see if they would like to utilize the garden, which by then was fully operational and ready to use with irrigation systems and compost- amended soil, for free. FHCHC agreed. They hired Kline to join their DPP team, and one of her tasks was to run the gardening component for the clinic’s patient population. The position became a staff person shared by both FHCHC and New Haven Farms. “I had never heard of urban farms or gardens existing to impact this particular population’s health and food security. It was at the time —and still is— a pretty unique mission,” Kline statesSoon after the collaboration began between FHCHC and New Haven Farms, the program became hugely popular with patients and their families, Kline said, and garnered national press including a New York Times article. Most importantly, it helped people connect the dots between their DPP education and their daily eating habits. “It filled a gap for people,” Kline explained. “At the DDP, they’re learning cooking and nutrition, [and] behavior change concepts, but people don’t necessarily have the tools to [implement] the things they’re learning – tools being access to fresh fruits and vegetables. This fills that gap.”Since then, New Haven Farms has expanded into its own 501(c)3 nonprofit, adding new community farms in other low- income areas of New Haven. They’re now planning to partner with other health centers beyond FHCHC, addressing food security and education for low-income patients with diabetes throughout New Haven.THE NITTY GRITTY: STAFF, IT, AND FUNDING…Kline says that the partnership wasn’t onerous to set up because of the timing: the farm was ready to be used, resulting in minimal start-up costs, and the health center was in the process of setting up their DPP, meaning there was flexibility to add a new component. FHCHC’s IT team easily set up the new referral form in the EMR.“The last simple thing was orienting the clinicians so they knew about the program and knew how to make the referral when they were in people’s charts — that’s why this shared staff member is so critical,” explained Kline. “That person not only knows the IT sys- tem but they know the clinicians.” As that staff person, Kline would provide orientation to new clinicians and assist current clinicians in navigating the program. “If we’re not hitting our targets for referrals,” says Kline, the staff person can knock on the clinicians’ doors to check in. Kline notes that there are few incentives for clinicians to refer their patients; clinicians make referrals simply “because they’re excited about the program,” she said.As they expand, New Haven Farms is shifting its funding strategy. As a nonprofit, New Haven Farms is now charging the medical centers who wish to partner with them. Their new partner, Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, found some of the needed funds in its current operating budget; they also wrote New Haven Farms in as a sub-grantee in a related grant. They’re additionally asking for employee donations to help subsidize the cost of their patients’ participation. In other words, health centers wishing to participate in the program must be willing to do the often hard work of finding the funding.RESULTS…Initial data from the program is encouraging but not jaw-dropping. In 2013, there was a 20 percent decrease in food insecurity among participants and a notable increase of one serving per day of fruits and vegetables. There were not significant changes in BMI or blood pressure. New Haven Farms is incorporating the new data into their strategy. “We didn’t focus a lot that year on decreasing consumption of junk food,” noted Kline, instead focusing on increasing healthy food; they plan to change that. They will also increase on-the- farm exercise education, beyond the physical element of farming itself. “We’ve moved more toward the behavior change model,” in an attempt to affect BMI numbers. “We’re not a weight loss program, but we know that BMI is... associated with diet and related chronic disease risks,” Kline said. “So, some change in BMI would be nice… But the big things are food security, and fruit and vegetable intake, and those are things we definitely know we’re impacting, and it’s what our program is specifically designed to impact.”RESOURCES…Learn more about New Haven Farms on their website, http://www.newhavenfarms.org.More on FHCHC’s DPP can be found at:http://www.fhchc.org/diabetes-prevention.1. Giving the Poor Easy Access to Healthy Food Doesn’t Mean They’ll Buy It. New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/09/upshot/ giving-the-poor-easy-access-to-healthy-food-doesnt-mean-theyll-buy-it.html?smid=tw-nytimes&_r=1&abt=0002&abg=1. Accessed June 2, 2015.* The patient’s name has been changed to protect her privacy.
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New Haven Food Advocate Training/Internship Program

Posted by New Haven Food Policy Council on September 26, 2013 at 12:30pm

The NHFPC Food Advocate training is taking place on October 26th, and will be followed by an 11 hour internship.  The training is being organized by the New Haven Food Policy Council, the Community Alliance for Research and Engagement (CARE), and End Hunger CT!

The Food Advocate training is designed to train New Haven residents who have received food assistance to become their own advocates. Through basic skills and advocacy coaching, this training and internship provides the opportunity for people to tell their own personal stories and make a difference at the policy and community levels.

We are looking for 12 people in New Haven who are activists and 

 - who receive (or have received) SNAP or WIC benefits, or 
- who use (or have used) food pantries or soup kitchens, or 
- are seniors who are experiencing or are at risk of food insecurity.  

 As you’ll see in the attached brochure, the training and internship are both paid.  The application for the training is attached to the brochure.  All applications are due by October 11th.  Instructions for returning the application to us are included on the brochure. 

 If you know someone who may be interested in this opportunity, please contact Billy Bromage, chair of the Food Assistance Working Group at billy.bromage@yale.edu, to get a brochure.  You can also print the brochure from the attached PDF and have the applicant send it in.

Thank you, in advance, for any help you can provide in reaching out to people who might be interested in this opportunity to join us in working for positive food system change!

Food%20Advocate%20brochure.pdf
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