The Green Room

Fighting hunger and improving nutrition go hand-in-hand

By Julie Gehrki on February 10, 2012 Leave a comment

Thank you to Share Our Strength for sharing this photo from Cooking Matters

The Walmart Foundation works to create opportunities so people can live better and we have three opportunities every day to live up to that goal: breakfast, lunch and dinner.

We know that fighting hunger and improving nutrition go hand-in-hand. Walmart and the Walmart Foundation made a commitment of $2 billion through 2015 in cash and food donations to fight hunger in the United States.

In Fiscal Year 2011, we donated the equivalent of nearly 200 million meals and more than $60 million to fight hunger.

As part of our commitment, we have provided more than $13.5 million in grants to these programs, including $9.5 million announced this week. We are proud that our efforts have funded nutrition education programs, provided classes that teach moms and dads how to cook or shop for healthier foods on a budget. We are also sponsoring live cooking demonstrations in communities nationwide.

Our work with the American Heart Association to help launch “Simple Cooking with Heart” is a great example of a program that encourages Americans to cook low-cost, heart-healthy meals at home.

We’re continuing our support of Share Our Strength and their Cooking Matters program, which teaches people how to select and prepare nutritious and low-cost meals for themselves and their families.

We’re also working with Sesame Street to educate children about healthier food choices and promote awareness of proper nutrition. Our support makes possible important programs such as “Growing Hope Against Hunger,”designed to provide simple, empowering strategies to families who aren’t sure where their next meal will come from, and “Thought,” a bilingual, multimedia outreach initiative reaching three million low-income individuals coping with food insecurity.

Together, if we can reach the one out of every six Americans who don’t know where their next meal is coming from and make sure that meal is a healthy one, then we will truly be making a difference.