Partner for nutrition
Housing Authority role in BreakSpot lauded
Summer BreakSpot shows what nonprofits can accomplish when they work together and think outside the box, said Tisha Pinkney, resident relations manager for the Broward County Housing Authority.
The mobile feeding program is the fruit of an “unconventional partnership” of Florida Impact, Children’s Services Council, Meals on Wheels South Florida and the housing agency, Pinkney said.
Summer BreakSpot’s success was recently recognized with the 2017 Nan McKay & Associates Resident Service award at the NMA Housing Conference in Boston.
BreakSpot launched on four Broward County Housing Authority properties in 2014. It has grown to 75 locations. Summer 2018, it is on track to surpass 100 sites from Miami to southern Palm Beach County.
Organizers target neighborhoods that are food deserts with limited access to transportation. Children there depend on public school nutrition programs for a balanced diet.
While youngsters up to age 18 gather midday for lunch, they’re engaged in enrichment activities.
Various community partners teach the activity sessions. They include the YMCA and local law enforcement agencies. Topics may cover life skills, nutrition, art and literacy.
Early on, Summer BreakSpot caught the attention of the United States Department of Agriculture (the Florida agency is a sponsor), said Mark Adler, executive director of Meals on Wheels South Florida.
“After the first year, the USDA came down because they heard what we’d been up to. They adopted this model as a best practices model to be replicated. A number of Meals on Wheels programs started serving kids as well,” Adler said.
Now about 5,000 locations in the U.S., he said.
Surprisingly, the program has fostered several outcomes in addition to preventing hunger and summer learning slide, Adler said.
Residents enlisted as employees gain job skills. And vandalism, a problem when teens have idle time during vacation, has dropped 100 percent in BreakSpot sites.
“It’s a testament to all the partners involved in this program to what we can do collecivly when we put our efforts together, not recreating the wheel,” Adler said.
hwolt@sun-sentinel.com participate