Late last month, two well-respected and innovative school food organizations — FoodCorps and School Food Focus — announced their plan to merge. But since FoodCorps is all about placing volunteers in schools to work directly with students, while Focus is devoted to improving school food procurement, I wasn’t quite sure what this new organization might look like. So I got in touch with Cecily Upton, the co-founder and Vice President of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships at FoodCorps, and I’m pleased to share here our recent interview:
TLT: Can you first give my readers a little background on both Food Corps and School Food Focus? What does each organization currently do?
CU: FoodCorps’ mission is to connect kids to healthy food in schools. FoodCorps is best known for our deployment of 225 full-time AmeriCorps service members to 350 schools in 17 states and Washington, D.C. FoodCorps AmeriCorps service members deliver hands-on cooking and gardening lessons to students, steer students toward healthier options in the cafeteria, and bring teachers, parents, administrators and food service teams together to promote healthy food throughout schools (we call this a “schoolwide culture of health”). We’ve found that students in FoodCorps schools with more hands-on learning activities are eating triple the amount of fruits and vegetables as students who receive less of that hands-on learning. Six in ten students will finish out the school year improving their attitudes to new vegetables, trying new ones, or maintaining their high regard for them if they already liked them.
School Food Focus has improved the supply chain for healthier school food for nearly a decade, by working collaboratively with school district leadership, school food industry, farmers, producers, distributors, and government partners. Today, six of the country’s largest poultry producers have adopted School Food Focus’ Certified Responsible Antibiotic Use standards for chicken, which eliminate the overuse of medically important antibiotics, and provide for more transparency in food sourcing. Their work has contributed to the development of more than 100 healthier food products in the school food market, including foods free from artificial additives or ingredients, such as sliced turkey and more wholesome bean burritos.
TLT: What prompted your two organizations to decide to merge? Had you already been working together informally? And what’s the expected benefit of the merger?
CU: Last year, School Food Focus determined that in order to expand and grow their work in school food procurement, they needed to partner with a larger organization that was well-positioned to take it on. As soon we heard they were seeking such an organization, Curt [FoodCorps’ co-founder and CEO] and I called them up to put our names in the hat. After a number of robust conversations with Toni Liquori, Focus’ executive director, and her team, we were thrilled to present the opportunity to our board. They immediately saw the immense value of bringing School Food Focus’ legacy into our organization, to help us meet our mission. With this merger, FoodCorps is entering into the broad landscape that is the supply side of school food. Focus has worked so hard on making school meals healthier, and FoodCorps gets kids to eat those healthier meals. It just seemed natural to combine these two efforts into one, and we’re excited to see what comes next.
TLT: I’ve read that W.K. Kellogg Foundation is playing a role here, too. Can you tell us about that?
CU: The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is a private foundation whose work focuses on the needs of vulnerable children. They are the single largest and longest-standing funder of the school food space, and we are proud to have had both FoodCorps and School Food Focus seeded by funding from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation in our early days. The W.K. Kellogg Foundation is the lead funder for this merger, supporting the development of FoodCorps’ supply-side initiative, which will stand on the shoulders of School Food Focus’ long-time success in this work.
TLT: I’ve also read your two organizations are about to start a six-month strategic planning process? Is that meant to focus on one particular district and see how your two organizations can work together there? Or is it broader than that?
CU: While the merger will allow FoodCorps to draw heavily on the impact and relationships that School Food Focus has built over the last ten years, we also see it as an opportunity to analyze the work to date and determine how FoodCorps can best deliver on procurement goals, which are to improve the health and sustainability of products available to school meal programs. We bring new and different assets and resources to this work. We are using the strategic planning process to determine all the specifics—the precise strategies, operational needs, and implementation plans—necessary to reach these goals. This will not be business as usual. With the merger at its foundation, FoodCorps is launching a rigorous supply-side initiative focused on improving the school meals supply chain. We’ll be integrating this initiative with the ongoing “demand-building” work we’re already doing—educating kids about healthy food and supporting schools to develop the environments that encourage them to eat it.
We will continue to place our AmeriCorps service members in schools across the nation. And as this work moves forward, School Food Focus will officially close its doors as an organization. Toni Liquori will be providing senior-level support during the merger as she moves into retirement.
TLT: Does your new organization consider any district a possible recipient for its services, or do you particularly focus on, say, lower income districts, or districts meeting some other criteria?
CU: With the development of the supply-side work, FoodCorps will be analyzing this very question to determine the opportunities within the system for greatest impact. While this could result in directing services to particular types of districts, we have not made any decisions yet. We will be relying on voices from the field, industry, and government to help us determine the best strategies for roll-out at the end of the six month planning process. In our direct education work, FoodCorps currently concentrates on schools with high rates of students from low-income households, as measured by eligibility for free or reduced-price school lunch.
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