Children are our future and need to understand the importance of nutrition. In Fayette County, through the federally funded Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), the EFNEP program has been a factor in helping families to learn about nutrition education, meal planning, and food safety techniques to educate and change food pattern behaviors to low-income families. CIS (Community Inspired Solutions) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization.  Their mission is to help decrease violence in Lexington, KY. The CIS program provides different resources and community partners to provide educational learning opportunities with children. The CIS program has a program called UConnect and partners with Kentucky State University that provides evidence-based student engagement positive role-modeling opportunities that leads to success.

Kentucky State University Fayette County EFNEP program has helped encourage students on how to make half of their plate fruits and vegetables, Switch to fat-free or low-fat (1%) dairy, limit soda and other sugar-sweetened beverages, eat whole grains and reduce refined grains, and choose low-fat proteins. The students are also how to improve their health and wellbeing by using the MyPlate curriculum. Each month the students were able to cook healthy meals and learn about nutritious foods. Using the approved EFNEP curriculum, the students assisted in the preparation of various recipes. The ultimate goal is to teach them how to cook and prepare healthy meals.

Children were encouraged to eat and engage in healthy eating habits. Recently one of the reserved participants in the U Connect program was able to share with the class how thankful she was for the program encouraging her to eat fruits and vegetables and how much she enjoyed tasting the mango fruit we learned about in class. The students will continue the EFNEP programming and the goal is for them to cook and prepare healthy meals.