Fiscal year 2020 started off with KY State University SNAP-Ed Nutrition Program offering “Teen Cuisine” Curriculum to 116 Rowan County Middle School 6^th and 7^th grade students.  “Teen Cuisine” is curriculum developed by Virginia Tech Extension which teaches nutrition and basic cooking skills over 6 lessons.  Middle School is time for students to develop some independence and start making their own food choices.  This curriculum teaches them to make healthier choices.  The SNAP-Ed Program Assistant provided “Professor Popcorn” Curriculum to 60 students at McBrayer Elementary during January and February. This curriculum helps young people develop into healthy adults by gaining an interest in eating healthy foods, using safe food-handling techniques, and making physical activity part of their lifestyle. 

Along with our youth programs, “Healthy Choice for Everybody” classes were taught at Pathways to clients that live in their residential facilities and also to some living on their own.  Classes were also offered at Edgewater Recovery Centers at both the men facility and women’s facility, Blue Sky. The SNAP-Ed classes introduced MyPlate Guidelines, budgeting, meal planning, food safety, and ways to decrease fats and sugars, as well as the importance of exercise.  Food demonstrations were given at each class on low fat, low sugar foods that are easy to prepare and budget friendly.  Comments from participates ranged from, “I’ve tried foods I would never eat before, and I’m exercising more because of the exercises you all showed us in class.”  

The beginning of 2020 was very productive for our SNAP-Ed program, but like all things in March COVID-19 hit.  Plans to offer classes at other elementary schools in the county were put on hold as schools transferred to virtual classes and adults classes in person were no longer allowed to try to prevent the spread of the virus.  SNAP-Ed transitioned to online programming and begin to offer online adult classes through FaceBook live.  Rowan County Nutrition FaceBook Page was established and weekly newsletters and nutrition information posted.  Currently this group has 93 members, members are encouraged to share our nutrition information on their own page.  Since the senior citizens center is closed and meals are delivered to the homes, printed copies of the newsletter and nutrition information are printed and dropped off at the senior center office to be distributed with the 30 meals the deliver to the seniors.  Boodry Place is another one of our community partners we offer printed copies of newsletters and nutrition materials, 20 copies of the newsletters are dropped at the lobby for the residents to read at their leisure.  KSU SNAP-ED has also worked with Family Consumer Science and 4-H to provide nutrition information for their Grab Bags and some of the newsletters have been shared on the 4-H page as well.  SNAP-ED Nutrition will continue to offer nutrition information virtually until such time we can safely resume in person classes.