Friday afternoon the children of Waimea Canyon School escaped and ran down the street to the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii-Waimea clubhouse, where they got some tasty snacks to eat before going home to study and spend time with
Friday afternoon the children of Waimea Canyon School escaped and ran down the street to the Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii-Waimea clubhouse, where they got some tasty snacks to eat before going home to study and spend time with family.
The Boys & Girls Club celebrated its sixth anniversary last week with the unveiling of Hawai‘i’s first “Kids Cafe,” which offers healthy and tasty after-school snacks to children that also attend homework help sessions.
“We know the kids who come to ‘Homework Help’ and get a snack are getting something good to eat.
They’re getting a healthy snack, they’re not sitting at home eating chips and cookies all the time,” said William Trugillo, Kaua‘i branch director.
As Judy Lenthall, Kauai Food Bank director, said: “How can a child have the energy or the attention necessary to learn and aspire if they’re not eating right?” Knowing that eating unhealthy snacks all the time can lead to health problems down the line, the Kids Café program provides healthy alternatives three days a week.
Kids Cafe officially opened for business last Tuesday and for now, the 30 to 40 children who participate in “Power Hour” (homework help) will be able to get the snacks.
This week’s menu includes tuna sandwiches, PB&J and at times, hot dogs and cookies.
Eventually the program will be expanded to include more afterschoolers, and Trugillo said he’s sure the kids will come once they and their parents find out about it.
And, he’s hoping to track the progress of students who participate in both programs this school year.
They voluntarily chose to get the Kauai Children’s Discovery Museum involved. The KCDM is providing nutrition classes for families and youth as part of the Kids Cafe.
“We believe this program has important key elements: safe place to go, good food to eat, and an engaging learning program — a series of learning experiences that can increase awareness and guide positive change,” KCDM Executive Director Robin Mazor said at the event. The museum’s mission is to promote a lifelong love of learning, she added.
“It’s a personal and essential story and sometimes a sad story when there is not enough nourishing food or exercise. It’s an exciting story when we learn how our body really works, how to make healthy choices and how to grow our own food,” said Mazor.
The museum’s education director, Samara Phelps, will be coming to the Boys and Girls Club each month and providing additional educational materials to build on the ideas explored at each meeting. Kids will also play nutrition games and activities.
To be discussed: the food pyramid, the importance of drinking water, how digestion works and how junk food affects the body, reading product labels and understanding “serving sizes” and setting individual exercise goals. There will also be practical curriculum about how to plant gardens, and fun stuff like cooking with a solar oven.
ConAgra Foods granted $20,000 to Kaua‘i’s Kids Cafe — $10,000 worth of food through America’s Second Harvest to the Kaua‘i Food Bank, $5,000 to the Boys & Girls Club for staffing and food preparation, and $5,000 to the museum for offering nutrition classes and related information.
The Kids Cafe isn’t just about having fun and eating snacks, however.
ConAgra Foods only offers the program in areas that have many people living in poverty.
The Kapa‘a clubhouse was the first choice but without a certified food preparation kitchen, Kids Cafe went to Waimea. Opening a kitchen at Kapa‘a has been talked about, and plans are in the works to open a second Kids Cafe there.
Other programs that the Waimea Clubhouse will be offering this fall include Power Hour (homework help), Fitness Authority (encouraging physical health) and Digital Arts Suite (boosting technological imagination).
The program started at 3:30 p.m. with the fun youth activities and open house. At 4 p.m., Mayor Bryan Baptiste addressed the audience, followed by a short program explaining the Clubhouse and Kids Cafe.
The Waimea Clubhouse, located in a former community center adjacent to Waimea High School, first opened its doors in the fall of 1998. Servicing youth ages 7 to 17, the Clubhouse averages approximately 600 members annually.
Membership is $10 per year.
The Waimea Clubhouse will offer a healthy snack three days a week to members attending Power Hour in partnership with the Kauai Food Bank and the Kauai Children’s Discovery Museum.
The Kauai Food Bank will provide the food and the Kauai Children’s Discovery Museum will provide monthly classes on nutrition for the youth.
Kids Cafe is the nation’s largest charitable meal service program exclusively for needy children.
It is a program of America’s Second Harvest and is sponsored nationally by ConAgra Foods’ Feeding Children Better program.
Founded in 1993, there are currently more than 1,200 Kids Cafes operated by 145 affiliates in 42 states. ConAgra Foods, Inc. is one of North America’s largest packaged food companies, serving consumer grocery retailers, as well as restaurants and other food-service establishments.
ConAgra Foods’ Feeding Children Better program is a multi-year, multi-million-dollar initiative dedicated solely to attacking child hunger in America. The ConAgra Foods Feeding Children Better Foundation, in partnership with America’s Second Harvest, has funded more than 150 new Kids Cafes for hungry children. America’s Second Harvest is the largest charitable domestic hunger-relief organization in the country with a network of more than 200 affiliate food banks and food-rescue programs distributing 1.8 billion pounds of donated food and grocery products annually.
The Boys & Girls Club of Hawaii was founded in Kaua‘i shortly after Hurricane ‘Iniki, and now maintains clubhouses in Kapa‘a and Waimea, and a Teen Center in Lihu‘e. The club serves 2,000 Kauai youngsters annually both as club members and participants in many outreach and volunteer programs.
