The goal of SNAP-Ed Nutrition is alleviate food insecurity by offering nutrition, budgeting, and healthy lifestyle education to at risk population which includes both youths and adults.  COVID 19 increased the impact of food insecurity in American due to youths not being in school, adults and especially seniors not being able to go to senior centers for meals, and a decrease of supplies in stores, not to mention the closing of many business leading to unemployment and failure to obtain unemployment benefits due to problems with the system.  There are nearly 700,000 Kentuckians, including nearly 200,000 children, who struggle with hunger. That means 1 in 7 adults and 1 in 5 children in Kentucky lack consistent access to enough food for a healthy, active lifestyle according to KY Legal Food Frenzy.  That was before the pandemic hit, now it’s higher making the information the SNAP-Ed program more important.  However, due to the pandemic restrictions SNAP-Ed had to stop all in person classes and revise their approach to teaching to a virtual platform.

The first quarter of 2020 still finds the SNAP-Ed team working from home and adjusting to doing virtual programming for the SNAP-Ed fiscal year 2021 which begins in October.  Due to continued COVID 19 our nutrition team is still unable to do in person classes for either adults or youths. Schools that are in the counties we serve are still doing virtual classes and homeschooling, and even if they return to classrooms the new school policies during COVID doesn’t allow for outside visitors in the schools.  To achieve our goal of providing nutrition education to at risk youths and adults, SNAP-Ed is partnering with the elementary schools in the counties we cover to teach the “Organwise” Curriculum virtually, offering adult nutrition classes through our private FaceBook page, publishing newsletters and fact sheets to try to offer nutritional information to our at risk clientele and delivering to the senior center to be distributed with the meals delivered to the homes. 

Over the past 6 months while we’ve been working from home and doing virtual education, we’ve seen a steady rise in our FaceBook membership in all counties.  Our information shared includes exercise tips, food safety, budgeting, stocking food, healthy eating, and information on where to receive meals when schools and senior centers aren’t in session.  Realizing that a majority of our senior population don’t have internet access we begin printing and distributing our newsletters to the senior centers to give our with the meal deliveries along with fact sheets with nutritional information and free copies of the “Seasoned” magazine which offers tips on cooking, exercise and nutrition.  The SNAP-Ed team has also used this time to improve their education and have participated in numerous virtual nutritional education classes and learned technology to be able to use virtual programming, and look forward to partnering with the elementary school doing our “Organwise” virtual program and continue offering virtual adult classes through our county Facebook pages.