By placing your order over www.hipsnacks.com  or by picking up a Chocolate HIP Cookie in your favorite local participating store nearest you, you directly support Hip4Kids. Founded 10 years ago this September Hip4Kids was created by culinary professionals with many purposes in mind. We envisioned then as we do  today a highly integrated educational programming experience available over www.hip4kids.org , multimedia channels of every type and  the delivery of our educational workshops to all communities nationwide. We have been conducting our “Cookshops” for what is about to become our ninth year

Hip4Kids has developed 8 distinct formats of public programming, each for a specific set of needs but one of our most popular campaigns within Hip4Kids has been  connecting our friends and participants of our programming to Local Greenmarkets, CSA’s and the companies that provide the products that sustain us and MOTHER EARTH.

One of our most  valued programming efforts has been The Victory Garden which urges all Americans to get growing, to reconnect with the earth and to practice providing for themselves. Even if it’s a single plant it will surely bring a learning process and great satisfaction.

The Hip4Kids Mission Statement which was written 10 years ago stresses the need as well for all Americans to support and embrace the “Green Life” by supporting local agriculture and sustainable farming which not only equals better health through better quality food but better health for MOTHER EARTH and better health for the LOCAL ECONOMY. We hope all of our guests will take advantage of the updated news and links, information and activities we post as we bring our own small GREEN SPACE to life. We look forward to a very healthy very HIP Future. Its Hip 2B Green

 Hip4Kids and HIP SNACKS has just recently participated in The Westside County Fair Green Acres, the 21st Anniversary of ECOFEST in New York City’s Central Park and will next appear at Urban Go Green on October 24th,2009.We hope to see you there !

Link Partners:

• Ecofest

• Living Architecture

• Greenzine

Meeting minutes: Coalition to Build NYC Platform to End Child Hunger by 2015

Date: Wednesday, February 17, 2010

Present:

Next meeting:  Thursday, March 4, 2010, 4 p.m. – 6 p.m.  

Boardroom, Citizens’ Committee for Children

United Charities Building, 105 E. 22^nd Street, 7^th Floor

I.                    Introductions/ Process -setting

The meeting opened at 4 p.m., facilitated by Triada Stampas, director of Government Relations and Public Education, and Aine Duggan, Vice President for Research, Policy and Education for the Food Bank For New York City. Meeting started with participant introductions.

·         The group agreed to decide by consensus, leaving items of contention out of the platform in order to achieve a unified, unifying message.

·         The group established our goal: to develop a New York City platform for ending child hunger by 2015, so we can speak with a single voice with legislators at the federal, state and local level.

II.                  Defining “child hunger”:

Group discussed various existing measures of child hunger, or proxies for estimating extent of child hunger, including:  low or very low food security according to federal definition, eligibility for free or reduced school lunch, income level, reliance on/use of food assistance.

·         The group agreed to use the federal definition of “low food security,” which would refer to approximately 16.7 million, or 22.5 percent, of children in the United States.  Joel Berg, Executive Director of the New York City Coalition Against Hunger, informed the group that in New York City, the number of children experiencing low food security is between 400,000 and 500,000.

III.                Setting a course

The group engaged in a general discussion of how to frame our platform, issues that we should address therein, and who our audience would be.

The group agreed to focus on federal measures first, with state and local steps that can help reach national goals to be addressed at a later stage.

Suggestions for specific policies to address included:

·         health care reform,

·         TANF (Welfare) Reauthorization

·         Child Nutrition Reauthorization (Universal School Meals)

·         Farm Bill Reauthorization (Title IV)

·         minimum wage

·         Targeted tax credits like EITC and the Child Tax Credit

·         unspent ARRA funding

·          No Child Left Behind,

·         jobs bill

·         agriculture appropriations

·         transportation

Additional suggestions for subject areas to address:  nutrition education, malnutrition, obesity (as per First Lady Michelle Obama’s campaign), food access/cost, cost-savings of addressing child hunger.

Brainstorming about the group’s overall approach included a discussion of the extent to which we need to link our demands to potential funding sources.

IV.                Next steps

Information regarding working group formation is forthcoming. The next full-group meeting is scheduled for Thursday, March 4.