5 Ways to Support the JLP HealthFest

JLP Members, Supporters, And Sponsors

Our inaugural HealthFest is coming up THIS Saturday, January 21 from 10 a.m. – 2p.m. at Kiwanis Park (North Soccer Field) l! The HealthFest is a FREE* family-friendly event that features health and wellness vendors, activities, bounce houses, cooking and fitness demonstrations and FREE health screenings.

• Free pediatric dental screening and fluoride varnish for children 0-17
• Free BMI, Glucose, Cholesterol Testing
• Free Parenting Workshops
• Bounce Houses
• Face Painting
• Cardinal’s Big Red Mascot
• Blood Drive
• Free Personal Hygiene goodie bags (one per family, first come first serve)

When: Saturday, January 21  I 10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Where: Kiwanis Park (North Soccer Field)    5203 S. Ash Ave.    Tempe, AZ 85283

Here are 5 easy ways you can help us promote this event!

1. Download this flier and share it with friends, families, and colleagues. Ask permission from your child’s school, local church and/or community organization to post the flier on their bulletin boards.
2. Share this post on your Facebook page or retweet this post on your Twitter account
3. Share our blog post on your social media accounts and tag our handle, @juniorleaguephx
4. Give blood and save lives at United Blood Center’s mobile bus that will be at the HealthFest! Register at www.BloodHero.com using Sponsor Code: JuniorLeaguePhx OR email JLP President, Cathy Comer
5. Start a trend! Include the hashtags #jlphealthfest , #iamjlp #juniorleague #jlp on your social media posts

 

We are looking forward to a fun and successful day on January 21 and are excited to see you there.

Thank you for your support!

Sincerely,

The HealthFest Team

*This event is free to the public thanks to the generous support of General Mills

 

Save the Date for JLP’s Inaugural HealthFest!

 

 
Join us Saturday, January 21, for the Junior League of Phoenix first ever HealthFest! This FREE, family-friendly festival is focused on all things health and wellness. We will have vendors, fun activities, fitness demonstrations and much more.

When: Saturday, January 21  I  10 a.m. – 2 p.m.
Where: Daley Park I 1625 S. College Ave. I Tempe, AZ, 85281

Come support the JLP and our focus area of building a healthy Arizona. Stay tuned for more details.

This event is free to the public thanks to the generous support of General Mills.

Kids in the Kitchen at the PHX Kids GET FIT event

Fresh air, beautiful Arizona sunshine and the sound of little voices laughing surrounded us at the PHX Kids GET FIT event on October 1st. This free afternoon of fun and health was offered by The City of Phoenix Latino Institute along with community partners including the Junior League of Phoenix Kids in the Kitchen Committee!

We offered 3 hands-on cooking demos consisting of fruit kabobs, hummus and a vegetarian wrap. The children loved getting their hands in the mix by measuring, preparing and creating. It was exciting to see cooking through the children’s eyes. What sometimes seems like a chore or simply a means to an end was great fun for the kids.

The little ones viewed it as an art project; ripping up cilantro, sorting the bright fruit colors, and combining the ingredients for an outcome that was tasty and aesthetically appealing. We forget how tactile cooking really is and how healthy it can be for both our minds and bodies!

In the booth we offered educational games involving the food groups and how much sugar various beverages contain. Their knowledge was pretty impressive and the best part—watching them learn while having fun! They loved the healthy prizes including water bottles, pedometers, apples and oatmeal. The pedometers were a big hit and surprisingly the oatmeal was a favorite as well.

Thank you to all the JLP members who spent their morning making a healthy difference! These are the moments when we see our effort come to fruition and our impact happening right in front of our eyes.

Kids in The Kitchen Updates!

Kids In The Kitchen is back for the 2016-2017 year!  The committee is excited to continue with impacting local youth and families to adopt healthy eating habits.  We will continue with our nutritional lessons at the Boys and Girls Club in Guadalupe and we are excited to announce we will be adding an additional club in Chandler!

The lessons address portion sizes, well-rounded meals, reading nutrition labels, choosing healthy snacks… it’s amazing how much the kids learn and retain by the end of the year at the Little Chef celebration!

This year with the addition of branches, more families will be able to participate at the Little Chef event with putting together healthy, affordable pre-made meals to take home and save for later (last year we also gave away goody bags including a crockpot!).

Members: keep an eye out on the member calendar for volunteer shifts so you can join in on the fun!

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The Junior League of Phoenix is a network of empowered female civic leaders working with community partners to address and solve pressing issues like food insecurity/food access and with programs addressing nutrition and obesity. We’re part of an international network of 291 Leagues comprised of over 150,000 women, in Canada, Mexico, the U.K. and the U.S., engaged in similar work in their own communities. This provides us with a unique and powerful depth of knowledge and resourcefulness to bring about the changes we strive to accomplish.

Who Feeds Hungry Kids in Summer?

It’s a good question. According to the USDA, more than 22 million schoolchildren are eligible for free or reduced-price meals during the year through the National School Lunch Program, but during the summer, only 1 in 6 of those kids participate in the Summer Food Service Program. (The federal government is seeking to address that shortfall with the Seamless Summer Option, which offers local school districts a streamlined approach to feeding hungry children.)

Of course, the question of hungry kids in summer is part of a larger problem – hunger in American homes generally. A widely quoted statistic, from the Food Research & Action Center, a national advocacy group working to improve public policies and public-private partnerships to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the U.S., says that 1 in 6 families suffer from food insecurity.

Many nonprofits and advocacy groups are working to address that imbalance, in a wide range of ways.

Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign connects kids in need with nutritious food and teaches their families how to cook healthy, affordable meals.

Feed the Children connects donors, experts, partners, leaders and communities to attack the hunger problem from all angles.

Feeding America is the nation’s largest domestic hunger-relief organization, with a powerful and efficient network of 200 food banks across the country.

Food and nutrition have long been issues of concerns for many Junior Leagues.

In fact, action by the Junior League of Brooklyn in successfully petitioning the New York City Board of Education led to free lunches in schools there, a program that later became the model for the National School Lunch Program.

Many other Leagues are still creating innovative ways to deal with hunger insecurity and children in their communities.

And then there’s AJLI’s Junior Leagues’ Kids in the Kitchen program, now in its 10^th year, and adopted by more than 200 Junior Leagues in four countries.

By the way, if you’re looking for some healthy and nutritious kid snacks and meals from the KITK cookbook, try these!

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*This article was originally published in The Civic Lede, an official publication of The Association of Junior Leagues International, Inc., and has been reprinted with permission.  The Civic Lede spotlights notable developments in philanthropy, not-for-profits, women’s interests, voluntarism and leadership, and offers commentary on the issues on which The Junior League has been active for many years.

KITK makes a difference in the Valley in 2016!

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The Junior League of Phoenix helps to empower youth and families to adopt healthy habits and reverse the growth of childhood obesity in Maricopa County.

Kids in the Kitchen Program Goals:

• Increase children’s awareness of the nutrition in everyday foods
• Improve the quality of healthy food that kids eat by showing them easy and tasty ways to eat better
• Increase the amount of exercise that kids do during their daily routine

Our programs involve many exciting hands-on components to get kids and families involved in learning how to be healthy. Programming focuses on four components led by league and community volunteers:

Chef Presentation: Students will create simple, healthy snacks with chef presenters.

Eat This Not That: An instructional presentation helping students choose healthy alternatives at popular restaurants and fast food chains.

Food Plate: An instruction of the Food Plate (the successor of the Food Pyramid) and how much food one should eat from each category in relation to their plates.

Exercise: Participation in 45 minutes of low-key and fun exercises to promote an active lifestyle.

Kids also get to take home activity packets and recipes to continue their learning.

Learn more!

‘Kids in the Kitchen’ Community Program Awarded $20,000 Grant from General Mills

The Junior League of Phoenix (JLP) has announced that one of its signature community programs, “Kids in the Kitchen,” has been awarded a $20,000 grant from General Mills, one of the world’s leading food companies. The grant will enable JLP to host a Health and Nutrition Day in the fall of 2016, which will include educational food and fitness challenges for kids and families.

Current JLP programs are structured around the focus area of “Building a Healthy Arizona” in order to address food insecurity and the epidemic of childhood obesity. Founded by The Association of Junior Leagues International (AJLI) in 2006, Kids in the Kitchen is a hands-on initiative aimed at educating children and their families on the importance of nutrition and fitness to empower them to make healthy lifestyle choices.

“We are excited to plan a comprehensive day of playful learning with the help from this generous grant,” said Audrey Tregaskes, chair of JLP’s Kids in the Kitchen committee. “We have a big job of ‘Building a Healthy Arizona,’ and having this level of support enables us to reach more children and make a bigger impact.”

The goals for the Kids in the Kitchen program include increasing children’s awareness of nutrition in everyday foods, educating kids on how to improve the quality of food they eat, and incorporating more exercise into children’s daily routines. JLP volunteers teach the program throughout the year, which is based on four core activities about nutrition and exercise that were created in partnership with the Arizona State University’s College of Health Solutions.

In 2014-15 alone, JLP educated more than 1,200 Kids in the Kitchen participants. The JLP currently partners with the Boys and Girls Club of the East Valley, offering Kids in the Kitchen activities to third, fourth and fifth graders across more than 10 branches.

Passport to Health with Kids in the Kitchen

Junior League of Phoenix Kids in the Kitchen (KITK) was able to reach and impact 430 kids this year at Touch-A-Truck! When families arrived to the event in November children were given a Passport game card. The Passports took kids and families through various stations for activities geared toward healthy lifestyles. A stamp was given at each of the stations and after visiting all five Passport stations, children were given a reusable, collapsible water bottle as a special prize from Kids in the Kitchen! The water bottles will encourage healthy life choices by adding fun to staying hydrated.

The Passport took families to the helicopter where movement while standing in line was encouraged, to the Fresh Express bus where they were able to buy a piece of produce or create “Produce Rainbows,” to the Cookbook station where children were guided in finding their favorite vegetable in a recipe using the Index, to the KITK booth where they played “Eat This Not That” hopscotch and to ROCKETS for the Chemical Makeup of Water (H2O).

The passports were a huge success overall, and we hope to welcome them back again next year!

Phoenix Day Health Links – Nutrition Night

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Phoenix Day Health Links and the Junior League of Phoenix recently joined forces for our first Nutrition Night of the 2015-2016 year! About 25 families (60 people) attended the event at Central Park in Phoenix and had the opportunity to enjoy a delicious bowl of vegetarian chili and Greek yogurt parfait for dessert while learning the benefits of eating a vegetarian meal.

The kids enjoyed fun physical activities like a water balloon toss, an activity wheel, musical chairs and hop scotch.  Our focus for these events is to teach the community a healthy option for dinner, show them how to prepare it and have them enjoy it right there! Fun, family friendly activities are available to show how fun and easy fitness can be.

Our next Nutrition Night will be on January 13th and is open to the community. Stay tuned for more information.

by, Jennifer Mims

Fresh Express Mobile Produce Bus

This season is off to a great start in the JLP‘s second year with the mobile produce bus, Fresh Express! Last year we did great work around volunteering with the bus while educating customers on the importance of incorporating produce in to their diets. This year the focus has increased to include wellness based presentations to community centers that the bus frequents. The presentations are a new challenge for our committee and it is a great program because not only does it help the community, but it also develops Junior League members by establishing a curriculum and presenting in front of an audience.

Fresh Express at the Phoenix Food Day Apple Crunch in downtown Phoenix, with a focus on eating nutritious food and sourcing local produce.

We are also creating a program to incorporate nutritional information on the bus full time. Last year we faced a challenge on reaching all of Fresh Express’s customers because we were only able to offer so many hours of volunteers. This year we want to increase our impact and are focusing on educating more people in the community on the importance of a nutritional diet filled with produce. If you want to support Fresh Express by purchasing produce in the Phoenix and Tempe areas, please visit their website for an updated schedule:  http://www.discoverytriangle.org/fresh-express/

by, Michelle Moore, Fresh Express Chair