Lessons from Collaboration: How One Nonprofit Scaled Up Nutrition Education
This Triple Pundit article shares how FoodCorps’ partnership with the Walmart Foundation has helped expand and grow our efforts in connecting kids to healthy food over the past five years.
By FoodCorps — March 23, 2019
By Tina Casey, Triple Pundit
Corporate charity is branching out from its roots in the traditional gift-giving model. The innovative corporate foundations of today are engaging in transformative, dynamic work with nonprofits to achieve impacts far beyond their initial scope. The collaboration between the Walmart Foundation and the nonprofit organization FoodCorps exemplifies this trend, and it illustrates how companies can lend both their financial firepower and their expertise to help nonprofits scale up their missions.
The FoodCorps nutrition education model FoodCorps launched in 2010 with the mission of reaching children in school with empowering lessons about healthier eating.
The FoodCorps nutrition program involves the whole school—including teachers, staff and foodservice workers—and often extends to students’ families to create a culture of health. It revolves around hands-on and interactive classroom learning, healthier school meals, school gardens, and lessons that students can apply at home.
The “Corps” part of the program is also a key factor. As an AmeriCorps grant recipient, part of the FoodCorps mission is to support a new generation of emerging leaders. Schools that participate in the FoodCorps program host an AmeriCorps service member, who oversees the program as a school leader, role model and mentor throughout the academic year.
“The program is not just about creating an interest in healthy food,” explains FoodCorps co-founder and CEO Curt Ellis. “It’s really about taking ownership and bringing it home to their families.”
Recommended articles
May 10, 2023
FoodCorps Expands to Kentucky, Maryland, Missouri and Rhode Island to Provide Food Education to Thousands of New Students
May 03, 2023
Former First Lady Michelle Obama Announces $1 Million Commitment from PLEZi Nutrition to FoodCorps’ Nourishing Futures Initiative
March 30, 2023
White House Announces Challenge to End Hunger
Join us!
Together we will nourish futures for every
student. Share your email
address, and we'll make sure you have the tools to take action and join the movement for food education
and free, nourishing meals in school.
Thank you for joining us!!!
You’re one in a million!* Thank you for joining FoodCorps in our efforts to mobilize 1 million supporters for Nourishing Futures.
Your support will help us support children’s health and wellbeing today, allowing them to grow and
thrive tomorrow.
* You’re one in a million, but
we’re sure you know other like-minded folks. Share your commitment to FoodCorps’
Nourishing Futures initiative on your favorite social media platform.