Child Nutrition Reauthorization
As part of the NYC Alliance for Child Nutrition Reauthorization, City Harvest is working with other organizations and individuals in New York City to ask our members of Congress to make specific changes to the Child Nutrition Act. These changes will improve federal child nutrition programs so that they can feed more children and provide more nutritious food.
In a city where every third person fed by a soup kitchen or food pantry is a child, many aren’t receiving free or reduced price school meals. Even though they are the children most at risk of hunger, one third of children fed at emergency feeding programs in New York City do not receive free or reduced-price school lunch and only about half get school breakfast.
We also know that nearly half of the city's elementary school students are either overweight or obese, and that many of these children will pay the costs of an unhealthy diet down the road.
School meal programs can provide more than half the food children eat each day for the majority of the year. By improving these programs, we have a huge opportunity to make sure children in New York City and across the country get the healthy food they need. The NYC Alliance for Child Nutrition Reauthorization has developed an outline of needed changes that we support at City Harvest.
Attention New Yorkers! Your sign-on is important!
View and sign on to our list of priorities here.
Members of Congress from New York are on the committees responsible for writing the bill. Senator Kirsten Gillibrand sits on the Senate Agriculture Committee, and Representatives Yvette Clarke and Carolyn McCarthy sit on the corresponding House committee, Education and Labor. Your opinion matters to them!