Weekly Media Roundup - January 22, 2014

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Weekly Media Roundup - January 22, 2014

By Luci Manning Posted: Jan 22, 2014

Norman After-School Program Takes on Unhealthy Party Foods (The Norman Transcript, Oklahoma)
According to the The Norman Transcript, “Norman’s Community After School Program is taking a bite out of bad childhood eating habits.” The afterschool program released “Kids in the Kitchen,” a holiday cookbook with 49 tasty and healthy recipes. Recipes include a zombie smoothie for Halloween, Grinchy Party Poppers for Christmas, and raspberry applesauce for sweet treats on Valentine’s Day, and more. The afterschool program emailed a copy of the cookbook to parents and printed 100 copies. “We are hoping to make slow and steady changes to the unhealthy holiday party snack culture,” Lindsey Ellis, CASP Be Fit coordinator, told The Norman Transcript.

Nicol David, Top Female Squash Player in World, Inspires Girls in New York (Daily News, New York)
Earlier this week, the world’s top female squash player, Nicol David, spent time with two dozen pre-teen and high school-age girls and gave squash pointers and spoke to them about the sport. David also talked about how supportive her parents have been and what it was like to grow up in Malaysia. The girls are part of the afterschool program at Harlem’s SL Green StreetSquash Center. “One of the issues at this age is girls don’t really push themselves, and don’t have a lot of role models at this point,” Sasha Diamond-Lenow, StreetSquash’s director of social work, told the Daily News. “It’s inspiring to see a facility like this,” David told the Daily News. “To have squash bring all these girls together, to see all of them smiling, it’s really fulfilling. And it’s so nice that I can, hopefully, contribute something.”

Funding After School Programs (Off the Kuff, Texas)
In a post on Off the Kuff, Charles Kuffner writes: “Kids who are bored are more likely to get into trouble than kids who are busy. Doesn’t make them bad kids, it just makes them kids. I don’t know about you, but I certainly did a few stupid things when I was a kid and didn’t have anything better to do. The fact that federal grants are getting scarcer for [afterschool programs], presumably in the name of “austerity” or “smaller government”, is a scandal and a travesty, but this is the world we live in right now. We can pay now to help keep kids busy and engaged and productive, or we can pay later when they’re not. You tell me what makes more sense.”

Free Dinners Offered to Waco-Area Children (Waco Tribune, Texas)
As part of an expanded effort to combat child hunger, the Food on the Move program is providing free evening meals to children ages 18 and younger at 17 different sites in Waco. In order to participate in the free meals program, each of the sites must offer some sort of enrichment activity, such as tutoring, homework help, sports or a reading club. “If we think of all that parents, in particular low-income working parents, have to face—of scheduling problems and transportation issues people face often in Waco—we know this program can combine a couple of really basic needs and help meet those for families in a way that will allow them to focus on continuing to provide for their families and work hard at their jobs if they know that there’s a place that’s safe that their children can go to after school and receive some homework help as well as a free meal,” Kelsey Scherer, child nutrition outreach specialist for the Texas Hunger Initiative, told the Waco Tribune.