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Welcome everyone to this year's 2014 Summer Meals webinar series. This is the first webinar
in our series, and it's all about exploring out new Summer Meals website and tool kit.
We've been working really hard to get some good resources out to all of you, and we will
be exploring those tools today. So you can see there on the screen that that link, you
can send it to a friend or a colleague so that they can also join this webinar today,
and my name is Jimmy Nguyen. I'll be your moderator today. We also have some special
guests for you. We have our USDA Food and Nutrition Service Administrator Audrey Rowe.
She's going to be welcoming everyone and talking about the great things that we're doing this
year to expand Summer Meals. We also have Signe Anderson from our friends at the Food
Research and Action Center, also known as FRAC. And we also have Kim Caldwell from Share
Our Strength on this presentation today. And I'm just going to go over a few things with
you all. And we'll be taking questions, probably at the last ten minutes of this webinar. But
you can ask questions all throughout the webinar in the lower left-hand corner of your screen
in that text box. I see some of you have already started asking questions, so that's good.
And then you can also dial star one to ask a question over the phone. And I'll be prompting
you to do that when we start the Q&A session. And so like I said this is the first webinar
in our 2014 webinar series. We have other ones coming up all throughout March and April,
and you can use that link below to register for any of them. And I'll be talking about
those webinars a little bit later. So we hope to see you for all of our webinars, not just
for the one today. And now I'm going to introduce our esteemed administrator, Audrey Rowe, to
talk to you about why Summer Meals is so important and what we're trying to accomplish here this
year. Take it away, Audrey. Thank you, Jimmy. First of all, let me welcome everyone and
thank you for joining us today on this webinar. As Jimmy said, this is the first in a series
of webinars. The opportunity, not only for you to hear first hand from us what the program
-- how to participate in the program, what some of the rules and regulations are about
the program, some of the creative ideas, the simplification -- program simplification that
we have made over the years listening to you and the feedback from these calls, the various
options that you have, and the various waivers and other opportunities and best practices
that we are finding. I wanted to open this up because I want all of you to join with
us in making this summer a summer where as a national effort we ensure that every child
who is entitled to a summer meal has access to it. We know that during the summer we see
-- during the school year we see 21 million children. During the summer we find that one
out of six students actually participates in the summer program and receives a meal.
So I have been asking that question of myself since I served as the administrator -- where
are these other children and why are they not accessing our programs? What more can
we do? We know that summer is a time in which children -- learning -- they're away from
school, so there's a lot, maybe a lot less organized activities. How do we engage them
in organized activities, physical activities, sartorial activities, reading, but also how
through community-based organizations which may have excellent programs going through
the summer, faith-based organizations which may have excellent programs, how do we engage
and ensure that all of the children who are participating in those programs have access
to summer feeding and how do we get information out to our children, and to their parents
most importantly. One of the biggest frustrations that I experience is that quite often particularly
children that live in more rural communities, there are a number of challenges to getting
programs up and running but also getting the children to the programs. We have been working
throughout USDA, this is not just an FNS -- a Food and Nutrition Service -- effort, this
is a USDA effort, and it also includes our national other federal agencies. So we're
all working together to try and ensure that we have the resources available, transportation
resources, resources to retrofit buses, various resources that may be within USDA or in other
federal agencies. We know that school districts are facing budget constraints and so sometimes
they're not offering summer school, so how do we ensure that the children who go to those
schools get to participate in a feeding program? It is for us, and for me I can honestly say
I think it's a moral responsibility to ensure that no child goes hungry. And that's what
I'm asking you to do and join with us in working and using every resource, creative idea that
we have to ensure that no child goes hungry. We met with the Secretary of Agriculture yesterday,
Thomas Vilsack, who gave us his marching orders. Again, let's make sure that we're doing everything
we can to simplify the process, to create access and to support your effort. So thank
you for joining us on this webinar. You're going to learn and get a lot of good information.
And please ask questions because that's one way we get to understand how the program is
impacting your communities and what some of the challenges are. So, again, thank you very
much. I want to thank the staff for organizing this, and of course our partners at FRAC and
Share Our Strength who continue to work with us. And at this point I'm going to turn it
back to Jimmy Nguyen. Okay. Thank you so much, Audrey, for that wonderful welcome and your
great remarks. I hope everyone is inspired to have a good 2014, and we're going to now
turn it over to Mandana Yousefi from the Child Nutrition Division. She is our resident Summer
Meals guru, and she is going to go over some of the new program simplifications and then
walk you through our new Summer Meals website and tool kit, so take it away Mandana. Thank
you so much, Jimmy. Hi, everyone. Thanks for all the people that are logging on today to
hear about all the great things that we've been trying to do to expand Summer Meals throughout
the country and also get some resources from our partners as well. So as you just heard
from our Administrator, this is an agency and department effort, and part of those efforts
really start with us looking at different program requirements. So for the past two
years we've been trying to figure out ways to streamline and simplify things, and as
I talk about some of these simplifications, I want you all to know that these are handouts
that are attached to this webinar, so you'll definitely have those resources. They're also
on our website, and I'll highlight that for you all as well as I do that walk through.
But first up is our simplification for schools. So if you're a National School Lunch Program
school, there is a simplified application procedure that we have in place now for schools
that want to serve summer meals to their community. There's also simplified procedures behind
procurement and monitoring requirements. Next I want to talk about year round meals. At
USDA we would love if where children go when school is out is the same place during the
school year and in the summertime. So operators of the At Risk After School Meals component
of the Child and Adult Care Food Program, we would like to also be operators of the
Summer Meals program. So we've issued a couple of pieces of guidance that (inaudible) processes
from the school-to-summer transition and the summer-to-school transition, and a really
fun fact, if you are an At Risk After School Meals center, you've used school data to establish
area eligibility to have that site. That means your summer site is automatically eligible
to be an open site, so there's things like that information in the memos that I really
urge everyone to pay attention to, take a look at so you can be more aware when you're
doing your outreach effort. There are a lot of other simplifications that we've done.
Just a couple I want to highlight. We've waived our federal meal service restriction, so there's
no longer things that we federally require. There could be state requirements. And also
we do require that you do set meal service times -- sponsors set meal service times for
each of their sites, so that's definitely something that everyone should still talk
to their states about. We've expanded offer versus serve. Previously only schools could
do offer versus serve, but now really any sponsor can do it. And it's a really great
thing to look at when you're looking at lessening your food waste and figuring out more what
the children like to eat. Offer versus serve is a great option for all sponsors. We've
also expanded the traveling apple policy. So the traveling apple policy is our informal
name for the policy that used to allow, at the state agency's discretion, sponsors to
let children take either a fruit or a vegetable component off site. And that's where the traveling
apple name came from. We've expanded that policy so that it's no longer at the state
agency's discretion. It's at any sponsor's discretion. So sponsors can decide whether
or not they want to take part in this. And we've also expanded it to include the grain
component. So now something like a pack of crackers could be taken off site. So these
are some exciting flexibilities that we've issued. I also want to briefly talk about
our heat demonstration project. Throughout the past few years, we've been getting complaints
from sponsors throughout the country about the heat and how it's really getting hotter
in the summertime and it's really hard for children at these sites that are outside,
and when there's no air conditioning or shelter, things like that. So we have come up with
a demonstration project to look at how maybe we can tackle this issue. This is the second
year that USDA has this, and it's a demonstration project where SFSP, as well as the National
School Lunch Program's team of summer options sponsors that are operating outdoor sites
that don't have a temperature-controlled alternative site can operate non-congregate feedings on
the days the areas are experiencing excessive heat. And I know that's a lot of text that's
on there, and I'm sure this has peaked a lot of people's interest. We have a memo that
covers this, but there's also a webinar that I did on this to our state agencies. Our state
agencies have been thoroughly trained on this demonstration project, and we've suggested
that they inform all of their sponsors that there are sponsor trainings about this requirement,
but if you want to know more information, just click that YouTube link and you can hear
my lovely voice for about 30 more minutes talking about this demonstration project.
So that's definitely a resource that you guys should check out if you're interested. Now
for the fun part now that we're done talking about policy. We have done a lot of changes
to our website. And in our website we've created something called the Summer Meals Tool Kit
that I will explore a little bit more. But first up I want us to do a quick overview
of what the Summer Food Service Program website looks like. We think at USDA our website should
be the one stop shop for all things related to Summer Food Service Programs. So, first
stop, this is the first page. On the left-hand side we have information about how sponsors
can apply to the program, just general requirements, how to contact your state agency. This is
really the basic, the program operation. We also have browsing by subject, and that's
where there's some of the more technical side of things. I really want to highlight the
Policy tab. If you click that Policy tab, it takes you to this page, and this has all
of our policy memos that we publish. And we try to publish our policy memos every fall
and capture all of the things that have come up throughout the year to make the program
a little bit more clear in our guidance. So this is a really important page for anyone
that's operating this program. Because I don't expect you all to check our website every
day, a really great option is to click this red envelope up at the top right corner. Once
you click that, it will take you to Gov Delivery. And so Gov Delivery is this great service
that we have at USDA that will give you the option of which programs do you want to get
information about. You put your email address in, and once you put in your email address,
a list of all USDA programs comes up. You just click the Summer Food Service Program,
and any time we issue anything new about the program, you'll get that information straight
to your inbox. The next really great resource that I want people to look at are our summer
handbooks. Our summer handbooks are updated every year with our new policy guidance, verifications
and things like that. So if you click on the Administrative Guidance for Sponsors, for
example, that should come up. And it's a great PDF that you can print out and leave at your
desk if you're a sponsor, or if you're an advocate that wants to know about the new
things happening in the program. And something really great that we do every year is that
we highlight the changes in the program to make it easier for program operators to see
what's new. So as you can see, the 2014 is updated, or highlighted, but there's a lot
of other things in there that are captured in the handbook. So, for example, something
that the handbook highlights that is interesting is information about the demonstration project.
So any sponsor that's looking at this handbook that wants to know what do they have to think
about when they're dealing with extreme weather conditions, the handbook actually highlights
this new option for sponsors and tells you what memo to look at for more information.
So it's a really great resource that I hope everyone is aware of and utilizing. Okay.
Next up is the tool kit. So this is our Summer Meals Tool Kit. And the great thing about
this is that it's serving a purpose to help everyone at any level of administration of
the program. So, as you can see, it's split up in seven mini-tool kits. And when we say
tool kits, we really mean the resources for people to use when they're doing their Summer
Meals operations at any level. You can be a state agency, and it has information on
different policies, different programs, part of like what they have to think about when
they are doing planning. There's also resources for partnering organizations. Summer Meals
Sponsors has specific information on how to work with the vendors, their menu planning,
the outreach responsibilities they have. Going down we have a whole tool kit dedicated to
the USDA resources, but we have the different templates and letters that are out there.
And also communication strategies and resources. Things to think about when you are trying
to get the word out. So the first part of the tool kit that I really want to highlight
is state agencies. And the first bit is the practice planning. This practice planning
resource is linked in at the state agency partner organization and sponsor tool kit,
so it's a document relevant to all three levels of program administration for outreach purposes.
And this document talks about how Summer Meals is a year-round effort. And so it has a calendar
that actually lists the different things that you should think about every year, every month
in the year, depending on who you are, if you're a state, if you're a partner, or if
you're a sponsor. The great thing about all of our pages in the tool kit is that while
it talks about USDA's position on things and the best practices that we have, as you go
down in our document, we actually list additional resources that are relevant to that area of
operation. So here we have information on if you're a new sponsor, some of the things
that you should think about. We have information on administration and management plan and
the development of that that the agencies have to do over here. There's also information
on sponsor retention. If you scroll down even more in our tool kit pages, we link partner
resources. So while this is a planning document that USDA has created, FRAC also has a great
calendar that we'd love people to check out. So really, the purpose of the tool kit is
to become this one stop shop where all the information about a current topic is featured.
Another thing that I want to highlight is our sponsor tool kit. (Inaudible) open up.
So our sponsor tool kit needs to cover a lot of the different things that sponsors need
to think about that aren't necessarily regulatory (inaudible) give more advice to sponsors about
what they should think about. So let's click Mobile Feeding. It's a hot topic. People are
really trying to figure out how to make that work especially in rural communities. So here
is a basic overview of what mobile feeding looks like and it has a really great example.
As you scroll down, we have an explanation of how it works, the policy behind it for
people that are interested in learning more about it, and we have Seeing It In Action.
So this section highlights multiple examples of mobile feeding (inaudible). As some of
you may know, one model might not work in every community. So we wanted to highlight
as many examples as we could. And then down here we have our friends at Share Our Strength.
They have a really great mobile meals playbook that we highlight. So, again, this is another
really great resource for people to check out. Another page we're really excited about
is our vended meal. Procurement seems to be sometimes a complicated area for state agencies,
sponsors, and we really want people to know the importance of making sure that you're
well versed in procurement requirements and also know your options. So here is a breakdown
of the things that you should think about and understand what should be in your bid
and the different things that matter when you're selecting a vendor to ensure the most
successful Summer Meals site. So when thinking about your meals and conducting a competitive
procurement, it's important to know that you can put a nutrition analysis in your bid,
you can do taste tests. That type of information is all in here, and I really urge anyone at
the sponsor level to check this page out specifically so you can learn a little bit more about this
topic. But, of course, just like all of our other tool kit pages, at the end of this part
of the tool kit, we have our USDA resources that talk a little bit more about this. Then
we have our partner resources. And here we have the Food and Research in Action Center's
Vendor Guide as well as their local foods guide. So that's basically the gist of the
tool kit. This is web based, so it means at any point throughout the work that we do,
if we stumble upon something, a new resource that we think should be highlighted in our
tool kit from one of our partners, we will add that. If there is a new subject of information
that we find people really want to know about, we will create new tool kit pages. So I urge
all of you to not print any of these things but to instead bookmark this page because
it's kind of a living product. So if there is anything that you think that you would
need from us, please, give us that feedback. If there's anything that you have that you
think is an amazing resource that we should be highlighting, please let us know. We're
really excited about this and we really hope that for years to come this does become the
central hub of information where state agencies, partners, sponsors and advocates come to learn
about Summer Meals and share their best practices. With that, thank you. I will pass the mic
over to Jimmy. All right. Thank you, Mandana, and we're going to go back to the presentation.
I see that a lot of you are chatting it up on the site, so continue to do that. I think
that there's some good Q&As already going on, so I appreciate that. And before we head
to the presentation by Signe Anderson, I just want to talk about some of the stuff that's
going to -- I'm going to show you at the end of the webinar. We're going to give you a
post-webinar survey to do right on this screen, so watch out for that. and as Mandana was
mentioning, you know, we want to hear from you all, see what resources you need, what's
lacking out there, and also tell us what's good out there so that we can try to replicate
it or improve upon it. So, without further ado, I'm going to -- actually, sorry. I have
to talk about the webinar series again. Now I have a chance I'll elaborate a little bit
more about these webinars. Next week on Tuesday we're going to have a webinar about being
a Summer Meals champion. I know that is a little bit vague, but basically that webinar
will show anyone from organizations to government agencies to concerned individuals how to get
involved with summer meals. As you all know, this program is really creative and you can
get involved in various ways even if you're not a sponsor or a site, you can volunteer,
drive the kids to the sites, or drive the food to the sites. So that's going to be that
webinar topic. And then the other ones are a little bit self-explanatory. The one next
week on Thursday, March 13th, will have some elected officials and some representatives
of elected officials on this webinar to talk about how you, as an elected official, can
get involved, or how you, as a constituent, citizen, can approach your elected official
to get them more involved in Summer Meals. And then, as you see, there are some other
ones. So check that out. I know you can't click on that link right now, but we're going
to be able to transfer you, all the files from this webinar, at the end of this webinar,
so just be patient and we'll get all these files to you at the end. And now we get to
Signe Anderson from the Food Research and Action Center. Take it away, Signe. Excellent.
Thanks, Jimmy, and thanks, Mandana, and also on behalf of FRAC I would like to say thank
you to Audrey Rowe for being on today's call. I think it's really exciting and great about
her passion and commitment to Summer Meals and it's great to have her as a player in
the Summer Meals Program. And thanks to the USDA for their strong focus on summer. I think
it will make a difference. So I'm really excited to be here for FRAC. I'm representing the
Food Research and Action Center and here to share some of the resources that we have to
assist in efforts to build the summer nutrition programs and make them more accessible to
children who need these programs during the summertime. And just a quick background on
FRAC. We are a national anti-hunger organization. We're nonprofit and nonpartisan, and we focus
on the federal nutrition programs such as SNAP and the Summer Meals program that we're
talking about today. We work with a great network of anti-hunger and child advocates
and state and local nonprofits, sponsors, schools, national organizations. Basically
everyone who will help in the effort to increase and advocate for the child nutrition programs.
So we conduct research and policy analysis on hunger issues in America. And one of our
resources is our annual research report that we do every year titled Hunger Doesn't Take
a Vacation. And it looks at participation in the summer food program. And the full report
is available online. It looks at participation numbers, how many children are missed by the
program, and the amount of federal dollars that get left on the table when states do
not reach all the children who could benefit. So I'm going to go to the next slide. So here's
a list of several of our resources. And I'm going to highlight some of these today in
the next few slides. But in addition to these resources, we also gather information and
best practices from states across the country. And we work closely with sponsors and advocates
who are participating in these programs, and we often love to connect new people, people
who are new to the programs, to some of these experts that are doing great work. So that's
-- consider FRAC as a resource. And if you are a school new to the program, then we are
happy to connect you with a school that has been doing it in the past and has great strategies
and successes around Summer Meals. So on this side, this highlights just some of our key
resources and -- oh, great. Thanks, Jimmy. So I have -- I'm able to share my Desktop
with you, so I'm going to actually highlight a few of these. First I'll go to our website.
So here's our website, and most of -- when you're looking for a summer program, you want
to go to the Federal Nutrition Program tab in the middle there and scroll down to the
Nutrition Program, and there is our Summer Nutrition Program page. And one of the resources
that's listed in the resources list that was in that slide is the FRAC Implementation Calendar
and Guide, and Mandana had mentioned that earlier. And I'm just going to click on this
link here, and that will help you get to it. There are a few ways that you can get to this
page, but that's probably the best way. Let me see. And I'm going to go back and talk
a little bit more about the Year Round Summer Food Calendar and Guide. So, the Year Round
Implementation Calendar and Guide, it's a monthly assistance guide for sponsors and
advocates. It's a calendar that's set up step-by-step to look at the program and provide support
and ideas to help strengthen and expand your Summer Meal work. So each month is divided
into two sections, again focusing on sponsors and advocates like I had mentioned. And I've
actually included a snapshot of March here. So it breaks it down month-by-month and gives
ideas and resources about what a sponsor can do during the month of March and gives the
same ideas and resources that pertain to advocates about what they can do during the month of
March. So it gives a year-round approach to planning for summer. All right. So another
resource that was listed on that slide was our State Agency Sponsor Attention Strategy
tool. So we created this to look at ways to foster the sponsor and state agency relationship.
It looks at ways for the state agency to stay connected and in contact with the sponsors.
One of those suggestions is doing a simple yearly survey just to determine that sponsors
will return for another year as a sponsor and if not to offer backup plans to ensure
that another sponsor will be able to fill any potential voids that might exist when
that sponsor bows out of the program. So it's a great tool for working with your state agency
and gives some ideas for a state agency in how to work with their sponsors. All right.
And the next resource that was listed on that original list of resources that we have is
-- so on our Summer Meals landing page, you will also be able to access the FRAC Summer
Food Target Mapper, and this is a great tool for advocates or state agencies or sponsors,
anyone working to fill gaps to adding additional sites. And this tool uses census data to determine
if a new site is in a qualifying area. So you just simply enter the site address, and
through a color coding system you can determine whether or not your new site will qualify.
So if your address ends up in green, if it's colored in green, then your site qualifies.
And I can also show you where to find that. So, again, that is at our Summer Nutrition
landing page. And then you scroll down, and this is it. I'm actually not -- I'm sorry.
So I'm actually not going to click on it because I know that some systems are a little faster
or slower than ours, so I'll just leave it to if you go to our landing page, that's where
you find the Summer Mapper, the Target Mapper. And, again, it's a great tool for determining
whether or not a new site qualifies based on census data. All right. And the next slide.
All right. And I also wanted to share some of the future opportunities that we have going
on at FRAC. So last year we helped organize four summits around the child nutrition programs
in different states across the country. And this year we will be hosting another series
of summits. Our next summit is scheduled for March 26th in San Antonio where we'll be gathering
partners together to talk about summer and after school, and you can get more information
about that on our web site. We'll also be doing an additional two summits in California.
So all of that information can be found on the Events page of our website. We also do
a series of conference calls, our Meals Matters conference calls, on both summer and after
school meals. As Mandana mentioned in the beginning, the focus on year-round meals,
FRAC is also strongly looking and strongly supporting the efforts to look at these programs
as year-round programs. So we have both summer and after school meals matters calls once
a month. And actually we sometimes change it up and do webinars, and this month in March
we are doing a webinar with the National Council of La Raza. And that webinar is going to be
in Spanish. So please spread the word about this opportunity with any Spanish-speaking
communities that you might be connected to. And I'm actually going to go to our FRAC Events
page to show you how to access the webinar. And the Meals Matters call. So here we go
again back to the FRAC page. Here's the Home page, and here are the FRAC events. So here
you can see the webinar in Spanish is right there. If you link on that it will take you
to the registration. And also if you go to the See All Events, you can access past webinars
and conference calls. There's a list there of past webinars. So feel free to check those
out and register for future calls as well in that section. And then with the Summer
Food Awareness Week, we are very excited that USDA has been hosting this for the past few
years, and in collaboration with USDA and other national partners such as Share Our
Strength and Feeding America, we plan to participate again in this year's Summer Awareness Week.
And last year we did a Twitter town hall and other exciting events to promote and build
awareness around the summer nutrition programs. And we generally -- we release our summer
report in conjunction with the Awareness Week, so stay tuned, we'll be coming out with another
report on Hunger Doesn't Take a Vacation, and we will release it during the Summer Awareness
Week. And also we're doing a summer sponsor survey in collaboration with Share Our Strength,
and I think you'll hear more details about that from Kim, who's up next. But the deadline
for the survey has been extended, and we're excited about that and excited about the response
that we've been getting back. We hope to get some more, just a little bit more, responses
from sponsors to get feedback on how the program is working for sponsors and what are some
of the barriers standing in their way. And I think it will be a great snapshot of what's
happening around Summer Meals and hopefully a good and valuable resource to move us all
forward in the Summer Meal Program. And I think that's my last slide, so I thank you
very much. I'm available at the end of today's call if you have questions. And I'm going
to turn it back to you, Jimmy. Okay. Thanks, Signe, for that great presentation. I don't
want to get to the questions too early, but Connie (inaudible) had a quick question. Do
you have a place where you list all your monthly calls in the call-in information? Yeah, it's
on that Event -- on the Event link on the Home page. And maybe what I can do is I can
link it in that Chat box there. Okay. And I think Kristin just did it for me. Thanks,
Kristin. That's so nice. Thanks, Kristin. All right. So we're going to hand it over
to Kim Caldwell at Share Our Strength now. Take it away, Kim. Hi. Thank you so much,
Jimmy. Like Jimmy said, my name is Kim Caldwell with Share Our Strength. I work in our Center
for Best Practices and I focus on Summer Meals. And I'm not sure I understand how to advance
the slides. There. It's actually quite intuitive, you all would be happy to know. So a little
bit about the No Kid Hungry Center for Best Practices. So at Share Our Strength our mission
is very clear. We are working to end childhood hunger by better connecting kids to the federal
nutrition programs that are already in place. And we have on the ground around the country
our No Kid Hungry campaigns and allies that are working to organize the local players
and resources around that, and so the Center for Best Practices role is to understand what's
happening in the field, add additional resources and pieces, and then pull it together -- I
like to say we pretty it up -- and then send it back out into the field. And we do that
largely through our No Kid Hungry Center for Best Practices website, which you see here,
and (inaudible) my presentation you'll see the whole time, bestpractices.nokidhungry.org
is where you can find that. So we work with most nutrition programs that affect kids,
but we're here today to talk about Summer Meals, which is good because that's what I
am qualified to talk to you about. So we have here our Summer Meals main page, and this
is where you can go to learn more about what No Kid Hungry campaigns are doing in the field.
We've done research. Last summer we did a national survey of low income families to
understand more about what's happening during the summer months. So we learned, for example,
that 80% of kids are in their homes during the summer months, which is important because
we know they aren't on vacation, they aren't staying with family at other places, they
are in the home. And we also that families on average, low income families, spend about
$300.00 more a month on food, which is a serious hit to any budget. And so we have materials
you can download there to help with any talking points if you're still making the case to
a lot of folks that there is a need to help kids in the summer months. So the next piece
this is where -- I see in the Chat section that people don't see anything, just a blank
screen. Are you all not able to see the presentation? I'll keep going just in case you can. So the
(inaudible) site for our webinars, and also we have information about our National Summer
Meals Summit that we held last year, which is a really exciting chance to bring together
different stakeholders from across the country to talk about what's happening in their state
and in their region. And thank you for all of your friendly encouraging chats that you
can see my slides. I spent a lot of time on these, so it means a lot that you can see
them. So that's the main place. And then the new resource that we just launched this year
is our Nutrition Program Sponsor Center. And this is designed to take both our new and
our existing resources that are aimed at sponsoring organizations and bring them to one place
where they're easier to access. And a little bit about what's there. So we have a section
on Program Excellence, which has a lot of resources around site management, and then
it has resources as well around program funding. So there was a question earlier in the Chat
function about funding available for vehicles, and so rural development, if you're in a rural
area, may have some funding available that is allowed to be put towards things like vehicles.
And so there is a memo there that we keep updated that we partner with the USDA to create
that is just a list of all of the -- a bunch of different granting opportunities that you
can apply for. And then our most popular webinar today was our grants webinar, which was really
a great webinar that had a number of different grantees and funders on it talking about their
strategies, innovative things they've done, and what they look for in quality funding
opportunities. So I encourage you to check that out if you weren't able to join us for
that call. The next piece I wanted to highlight is our (inaudible) Foundation for Meals Outreach
Tool Kit, which is very exciting because it has so many things that you can just take.
You can just download them and use them. So we have a lot of resources around media outreach,
and templates and tools. Handouts. Business cards. We have a photo library that you can
use to put cute pictures of kids on your materials. And the hope here is that the strategy that
this provides as well as the professional look and feel of the pieces you can see there
will be a value add to sites and sponsors so they don't have to spend their own resources
developing these things. So I encourage you to share that with others and to use any materials
yourself that might be helpful. We have as well a Keeping It Healthy section. Many of
you may be familiar with our Cooking Matters program that's been around for 20 years now.
And so this pulls in a lot of those resources including activities for sites where you can
have some of that Cooking Matters nutrition education curriculum in kind of a bite-sized
chunk. So the big -- this is a big piece. The Mobile Meals Playbook, which I say the
big piece because I probably spent the longest on it of any of these things. But also because
it's new and exciting. And what we did this last year was look at a number of successful
programs from around the country and try to distill their wisdom about what's working
and what's not working. And so it has some planning materials. It has best practices
from what's happening the field. A few things I really want to highlight is our Mobile Meals
Calculator, and this is, I think, maybe the tool that I am most excited about that we've
created this year. It is an interactive budgeting spreadsheet that you can download that includes
a number of assumptions about what it takes for a successful mobile program and then helps
you develop a budget. And it looks not only at what you put in there, but if you serve
more, or if you serve fewer meals, what will that do to the viability of your program.
And so, again, you know, this is just, I think, a really strong budgeting tool regardless.
And so I would encourage you to check that out. And the other piece, as we all know life
happens in narrative, and sometimes the best way to get a sense of what's working is to
hear a story. And so we have some case studies of Mobile Meals in action that give you a
quick snapshot of how they got started, how they organized their delivery model, and then
kind of the advice that they would give to others in their area. So we are very excited
about that. We just put out this year some new resources around collaborative planning
that you can find on the main page of our Summer Meals page. And we developed these
alongside USDA helping to support the state targeted assistance program this year. And
so really it's just a Word document you can download and update to hold a collaborative
planning meeting that brings together different stakeholders. We know that that a really important
key to success is knowing what everyone is doing, coordinating, amplifying, instead of
working in isolation, so we hope that that can be helpful in your effort. And as Signe
mentioned, you can be a part of developing more resources by helping us to get responses
to our summer national Summer Meals sponsor survey. And I checked and we hit 1,900 completed
responses during the webinar today, and I will say my private goal was to reach 1,000,
and we've almost doubled that, and, like Signe said, we've extended the timeline on that,
so if you're a sponsoring organization, please go and complete it. If you know sponsoring
organizations, please send them there. The more responses we get, the more helpful we'll
be able to be. And we plan to make the results available by state as well where we can. So,
again, you have another week to complete that if you're able to. And then last I just wanted
to highlight a tool that's coming up, our No Kid Hungry School Calculator. And this
is really a tool that's designed to help schools look across all program (inaudible) looking
at breakfast, after school and summer, and how could participating in these programs
impact their bottom line. So not only are they able to help kids, but how can they do
it in a smart way. And we partnered with Deloitte on this, and so it's a really exciting piece
because we know that access to food is really critical to the development of small brains,
and the schools really are one of the most important resources we have, specifically
in summer. Again, our research shows the school is the most trusted source of information
about summer meals and then the most associated type of organization with summer meals programs.
And so like I mentioned, it takes a look at sort of the different components of the programs,
what the school would need for participation, and what their costs are for meals, and then
takes a look at the different results and gives some recommendations on how they might
move forward. And so that will be available on all of the websites that I've showed you
today as soon as we have it ready to go live. so hopefully that will be helpful to the field.
So thank you so much. Our website, you can email best practices at any point. I think
that's it for me, so we can all stop talking and we can move on to questions. All right.
Thanks for your presentation, Kim. Before we get on to the questions, I'm going to now
transfer all of the files that we mentioned including the presentation to you all right
now. It should be popping up on your screen, if not now, then in a minute, within the minute.
And you can then go ahead and save these files to your computer so that you can access the
presentation or those PDFs that we have at any time. So while that is happening, we're
going to take one question from the audience, and this is kind of a repeat for you, Kim,
but Debra Louver (sp) asked about are there funds available to purchase vehicles? Yeah,
so like I mentioned, and I think I can go back to this slide here. There are, particularly
in rural areas, you know rural development has funds available, though somewhat limited.
But I encourage you to check out that memo because there's a lot out there between government
grants and grants that may support not necessarily the feeding part of your program but other
pieces of it. And that is something that gets updated quarterly as well by our office. And
so when there are opportunities that we know about, it will be available there. So, yes,
there are -- there is money out there. But the other thing I wanted to point out is that
there are a lot of different ways to approach a vehicle for mobile meals, and that's one
of the pieces that I'm really excited about that's in our tool kit is actually a chart
that helps you think through whether buying, leasing, or renting a truck and driver together,
or retrofitting a donated vehicle might be the best option for you. So in encourage you
to check that out because it may be that you're thinking with mobile that you have to approach
it a specific way, but seeing examples of how others have done it may spark some creativity
that you didn't even know you had. All right. Thanks for that answer about purchasing vehicles.
Our next question is from Karen, and maybe Mandana, you can answer this question. Her
question is, how do we know how much food to order or do we just wing it in the beginning?
Okay, so no, never wing it. It's really important if you're working with a vendor that you work
really closely with your state when you're developing that contract and that you work
with your state to develop the number of meals you think you're going to serve at each of
your sites. Typically new sponsors, especially, they have high hopes, and we love that, but
they think they're going to have, you know, they're going to reach every kid in their
community, and not enough kids show up. And when kids don't show up, your meals aren't
reimbursable. So it's really important to work with your state, get a sense of your
community, how many kids are going to come, and work with your vendors and make sure you
can adjust your meals as the weeks go on so that if in the beginning you think a lot of
kids are coming and then they're not, then you can switch up those numbers. And also
offer versus serve is a really great option for you to also look at so that you can kind
of control some of the leftover foods that you might have. There is also another question,
I think, from you, Karen. Are government commodities allowed to be used in the summer feeding program?
I actually think that's a great question. It's something that we did a webinar on last
year, so Jimmy's actually going to pull it up for us so you guys can all see. We have
a YouTube page -- USDA has a YouTube page, so I always like to tell people just to go
to YouTube, search the Summer Food Service Program, and you'll see a lot of webinars
that we've done in the past on them (inaudible) easy way. We also have them on our website
under training videos, but this is actually a really easy way just to access that. So
on our USDA page, as you can see, we have all of these different webinars that are recorded
in our webcasts. So we have a really great one that breaks down who is eligible to use
commodities in the summer feeding program and how that application works. And Jimmy's
highlighting that there. So that's a really great place to get information. Next question
up I see is from Talzonda (sp). Can I use my staff that I now have instead of using
outside sources? I'm going to assume you're talking about your site supervisor's staff
and that you are doing some type of programming during the year. We don't have -- your sites
have to be trained in those types of things, but as a sponsor, or let's say operator, it's
at your discretion who you want to employ for those services. Let's see if there are
any other questions coming in. Hold on, everyone. Actually, Sierra, are there any questions
on the phone line? Yes, I do have one question in queue. Okay. From Sandra. You're line is
now open. Thank you. I think this is great. The information has been really helpful, and
I'm on the phone listening but I can't see anything. So I just wanted to know is there
going to be a link or something that you can give, or a website, where we can get all of
this information that you've been talking about?
Yeah. All of the presentations today are being recorded, and then we will send them out the
link to all of the people that registered for this webinar so you can actually see the
slides. And we will -- I know I promised that we would send the PowerPoint presentation
today to everyone. It's just taking a little bit of time, but if you don't get it today,
we will send it to you in an email within 24 hours. Yeah, we're sorry about that, but
thank you so much for listening on. There do seem to be some people who are having technical
difficulties with this application. Great. Thank you. Okay. (Inaudible.) Wonderful. Well,
the first step to do is just contact your state agencies that you have a contract with
to do the summer meals, and ask them what your next step is. We have streamlined processing
of things like that, but really, you're number one partner in this transition is going to
be the state agency that administers these programs. So you can definitely get that started.
And just a fun fact, you don't have to start your -- you don't have to apply for the following
school year. You could even start operations next month if you wanted to just to kind of
get in there. Child care is a little different from Summer. You apply for the year and then
you kind of do the recertification annually. So it's a little different in the nature of
the way the applications are for the Summer Food Service Program. It's a robust application
process, but it is worth it because you get to feed kids year round. So I'm really excited
that you're thinking about doing year round feeding, and I hope that you do contact your
state agency.(Inaudible.) You're welcome. Operator, are there any more questions online?
Okay, well we have another question that's in from the tool, and after this I think we'll
take one more question, so if you have anything else, bring them in. This is from Tiffany.
Are these programs for kids only or are the parents also allowed to participate? So this
is a child nutrition program, so this means that at our enrolled place, closed sites,
and even our open sites where, of course, any kid can come up and get a meal, if you're
18 years and under, you can receive a free meal. Parents' meals cannot be reimbursed,
but we have seen instances where sponsors have gotten funding from other organizations
where they were able to serve free meals to adults. And there's also instances that we've
seen where parents have paid a very low price for a meal so that they can sit down and eat
with their children as well. It's a great model that we've seen boost participation
at sites, but unfortunately this is a federal child nutrition program, so only meals to
children can be reimbursed. Okay. We can get to one more question, but before we do I'm
going to pull up the post-webinar survey that I promised everyone, and you can just take
one minute out of your day and just fill this out, let us know what you thought about this
webinar, and some of the other things that we asked you about Summer Meals. So we're
going to take one last question. Great. So we have a really great question that we should
have brought up earlier. When is Summer Food Service Awareness Week? So every year annually
USDA has a Summer Food Service Week. This year it's the first week of June, June 2nd
to 6th. So what we try to say is we have a national kickoff event, and we hope that states
and communities also have kickoff events either that week or around that week. It's a really
great way to make sure that your communities know about the program, and it's a really
great way that if enough people are doing it around the country, we can get national
attention about it. So thank you so much for answering that question. With that I will
pass the mic to Jimmy. If you have any more questions, you can always contact us or the
other folks that were speaking on today's call. All right. And keep on asking those
questions. We can save the dialogue from the Chat, the Chat field, and then we'll try to
follow up on any questions that we missed by emailing you. Other than that, just go
ahead and take the survey if you have time, and we'll be sending you all of the handouts.
Right now I know some of you are getting them, but some of you might not have, but we'll
send them in an email within 24 hours. Thanks again to all of our presenters. Audrey Rowe,
our FNS Administrator. Mandana Yousefi from the USDA FNS Child Nutrition Division. Signe
Anderson at the Food Research Action Center. And then Kim Caldwell at Share Our Strength.
I hope everyone has a good year, and we'll see you next time on one of our webinars.
Thank you.