Nourish Colorado

Nutrition food education: nourish colorado's nutrition education team implemented statewide cooking matters programming to improve healthy eating behaviors and reduce food insecurity among snap-eligible coloradans. Programming combined direct education, policy, systems, and environmental change strategies, and technology-based innovations to reach colorado communities, including urban, rural, frontier, and tribal populations. Through partnerships with over 20 community-based organizations, nourish provided in-person and online cooking matters curricula, engaging more than 4,000 participants across colorado. Additional efforts supported healthy food access initiatives in pantries, retail settings, farmers markets, and produce prescription programs, ensuring that making the healthy choice was the easy choice. Evaluation tools and state reporting systems were used to maintain programs.

Healthy food in institutions: following the passage of proposition ff in november 2022, our team entered 2023 with a clear focus: to prepare a comprehensive plan in anticipation of the upcoming request for proposals from the colorado department of education (cde). Our goal was to position ourselves as the statewide training and technical assistance provider for the local food program (lfp). Throughout 2023, we dedicated time and resources to building a strategic response to the anticipated contract, which was expected to be released in spring 2024. However, in january 2024, we received unexpected news. Due to a significant increase in the number of students accessing free meals, funding priorities shifted. The statewide lfp contract-and all associated grants-were put on hold to ensure that every child could continue receiving meals at no cost. This development meant that not only was the statewide program paused, but additional funding for schools to purchase local food was no longer available. In june 2024, cde informed us that our existing lfp technical assistance contract would be extended for another year. This allowed us to continue supporting school districts already participating in the program. By august, 32 new districts were awarded year 4 lfp grants, and we expanded our support to include them alongside the year 3 cohort. Finally, in october 2024, our year 4 lfp ta contract with cde was officially approved, and 150,000 in funding was released. With this support, we continued our work with the 32 participating districts, ensuring they had the guidance and resources needed to successfully implement the program through september 2025.

Through our healthy food policy work, nourish colorado advances comprehensive federal and state level policy agendas that support a just and nutritious food system. We manage the food bill action team, which meets virtually monthly and includes market managers, state leaders, and community members who are focused on learning about policy and brainstorming new ideas that could be implemented through federal and state legislation. I n 2024, we worked with state legislators and the governor's office to secure additional funds for the local food program for schools, and created a permanent state program, the healthy food incentive program. Additionally, nourish traveled multiple times to washington dc to meet with the offices of federal legislators and secured co-sponsorships from several members of the colorado delegation on bills to support snap incentives, senior nutrition programs, and local food systems