KC Healthy Kids is proud to join more than 100 businesses recognized for workplace wellness and steps taken to keep staff healthy. 
 
The Greater Kansas City Chamber of Commerce’s Healthy KC Initiative is recognizing 132 businesses and organizations as Healthy KC Workplace Wellness Certified. KC Healthy Kids received platinum level certification.

For 2020, Workplace Wellness Certification had a specific focus on what policies and measures businesses implemented to ensure the health and wellbeing of their workforce, as well as creating a more inclusive and equitable environment to ensure employees’ mental health.

"As a nonprofit that advances the health and well-being of children and families through community-driven initiatives and advocacy, a healthy workplace culture has always been a priority at KC Healthy Kids. The Chamber’s certification motivated us to do even more, like establishing a formal wellness committee and offering regular mindfulness moments during staff meetings, to name a few,” says Danielle Robbins-Gregory, President/CEO of KC Healthy Kids.

"Over the past year, the wellness committee has helped us continue to strengthen our connections as a staff when we can’t be together in the office. The committee took suggestions from staff and arranged for a virtual happy hours, a watercolor workshop and distanced coffee dates at a park.”

The Healthy KC Workplace Wellness Certification program recognizes area organizations for innovation and excellence in promoting a culture of health in the workplace. Certifications range from Honorable Mention up to Platinum and are based on five pillars of health: healthy eating, active living, tobacco cessation, work-life integration, and design-built environment.

The Healthy KC Workplace Wellness Certification has taken place in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, and 2020 after the certification was moved to every two years. The next certification will be in 2022.

Kids who attended our 2020 Champions for Health Youth Summit put their plans to make a better world onto cotton squares that were later stitched into two quilts by artist NedRa Bonds. 

Two-hundred students designed quilt squares based on the stories NedRa told them about other youth activists and the question for the day, "What is your leadership superpower?"

NedRa is an American quilter, activist and retired teacher, born in Kansas City, Kansas and raised in the historic Quindaro neighborhood. Read more about NedRa

On December 27, 2020 the Coronavirus Response and Relief Supplemental Appropriations Act of 2021 was signed into law. The $900 billion pandemic relief bill extends and enhances aid programs that were set to expire at the end of the year.
A full summary of the bill is available here. Our policy team has highlighted emergency relief for food and farm programs, workers and businesses.

Food Access

• Funding for schools and daycares to continue feeding programs
• Kids under 6 years of age are now eligible for Pandemic-EBT benefits
• 15% increase in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits until June 30, 2021
• $5 million to expand online SNAP retailers, including farmers markets and direct sales
• $75 million for the Gus Schumacher Nutrition Incentive Program to incentivize the purchase of fruits and vegetables by SNAP participants
• Establish task force on WIC food delivery models, including online ordering, curbside pickup and grocery delivery
• $13 million for low-income adults 60 years and over through the Commodity Supplemental Food Program
• $175 million towards Older Americans Act nutrition programs, like Meals on Wheels
• $400 million for food banks through the Emergency Food Assistance Program
• $1.5 billion fund including the purchase of food and agricultural products to distribute through the Farmers to Families Food Box Program

Food and Farm Workers

• Direct one-time stimulus payment of $600 per adult, plus $600 for each dependent under 17 (income restrictions apply)
• $300 a week to all workers receiving unemployment benefits through Federal Pandemic Unemployment Compensation until March 14, 2021
• Extends benefits from pandemic unemployment assistance programs until April 5, 2021 (no new applications after March 14, 2021) and increases the number of weeks of benefits a person can claim
• $25 billion to state and local governments for Emergency Rental Assistance programs
• Extends moratorium on evictions through January 31, 2021
• $1.5 billion fund including support for small- and mid-sized food processors and distributors to adapt to COVID-19, including worker protection measures

Food and Farm Businesses

• Continues the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) and allows second PPP loans for businesses with less than 300 employees and a 25% decrease in gross receipts
• Extends deadline for payroll tax repayment to the end of 2021, if employer had deferred worker payroll taxes
• $8 billion towards supplemental payments for farmers and ranchers who suffered losses due to COVID-19
• $1.5 billion fund including the purchase of food and agricultural products to distribute through the Farmers to Families Food Box Program
• $400 million for a Dairy Product Donation Program to facilitate the donation of dairy products
• $60 million to help small meat and poultry processors meet federal food safety inspection standards and expand their markets across state lines
• $100 million for the Local Agriculture Market Program to help local farmers, value-added production and farmers markets respond to COVID-19 market disruptions
• $75 million for the Farming Opportunities Training Outreach program to support minority, tribal, veteran and beginning farmers access to USDA disaster programs and help adapt their farm businesses
• $28 million in block grants to state agriculture departments to support existing farm stress programs
• $100 million to states through the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program to support specialty crop farmers and address supply chain issues at the state level

For more information and resources, check out our COVID-19 Policy Resource Guide.

Here are 10 ways you can speak out for good food policy in Kansas City today and everyday.

​Why should I teach my child mindfulness? If you’re a parent who currently practices mindfulness, you already know the answer to this question. If you’re new to the practice, it might surprise you to learn there are many positive aspects of mindfulness.

Friends,
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Kansas and Missouri are among just 14 states that have not expanded Medicaid. This must change, and we need your help. ​

Many of our initiatives at KC Healthy Kids focus on improving community food security, which is defined as a condition in which all community residents obtain a safe, culturally acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a sustainable food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice. By its very definition, community food security means building food system equity. We cannot succeed in that goal without addressing racial injustice. 

We cannot advance the health and well-being of kids and their communities — our mission — if we do not address systemic racism and White supremacy culture.
 
This work starts within our agency. We understand that it is possible to do harm unintentionally, even when we believe we are doing good. Further, we understand that although our work has always aimed to further equity, we have also been complicit in systemic racism by, for example: failing to examine how the structure of our initiatives can privilege White voices and interests, failing to consistently and explicitly name policies and systems as racist when they have disparate impacts, and failing to challenge inequities in how nonprofits are funded. 
 
We want to do better. In our statement issued on June 6, 2020, we committed to doing so in at least 4 ways. In this, our second statement, we describe how we are following through on this commitment. We are preparing additional updates which will explore the many ways we are taking action in yet more detail. 
 
The urgency and impact of racial injustice in our work demands both immediate action and lasting efforts. We are therefore making a durable commitment to this work by evaluating and updating the guiding documents, including: Employee Handbook, Finance Manual, Strategic Plan and others to include specific policies, methods and goals for building an anti-racist agency culture and improving racial equity within our agency and through our initiatives. 
 
This is not a one time commitment; it includes annually defining the tactics, milestones and frequency for strategies outlined below. We will complete the first round of this process by year end, 2020. 
 
Learn: Increase staff and board knowledge and skills, and build an anti-racist agency culture committed to advancing racial equity.

• Require participation in regular trainings provided by experts, including those who are Black, Indigenous and People of Color (BIPOC), no less than three times annually.
• Support participation in cultural competency coalition(s) and trainings in the community. 
• Encourage participation in organizations which provide training, resources and accountability for racial justice. For example, Showing Up For Racial Justice
• Invite staff and board members to share relevant resources and information at staff meetings and through all-staff communications. 
• Ensure that our contracting practices, including for trainers, advance racial equity and center BIPOC leaders.
• Create safe spaces for difficult conversations. We can and must do difficult things. 

Assess: Conduct self-assessments and accountable evaluations to understand, monitor and adapt our efforts at advancing racial equity.   

• Engage staff in completing an annual equity audit, such as this one at We Are Beloved.
• Identify methods for evaluating initiatives through a racial equity lens, including how we will engage staff, board members, contractors, partners, stakeholders and clients (including people who are BIPOC) those efforts. For example, completing the National Farm to School Network Equity Assessment Tool and encouraging partners to do the same. 
• Identify tools for individual self-assessment for use by staff. 

Action: Identify short- and long-term actions for us as an organization, and in our initiatives which: 

• Seek equitable engagement and leadership of people who are BIPOC in our initiatives and governance.
• Ensure initiatives and communications advance racial equity and identify racist policies and systems as such.   
• Improve our accountability. 
• Encourage our partners and supporters to engage in this work in their own agencies and as individuals. 
• Build anti-racist culture, such as creating safe pathways for feedback.  

 
Although some of this work will take months to complete, and nearly all of it will be ongoing, we have already begun to take action. Here are a few highlights about those efforts, which we’ll expand upon in forthcoming articles. 

• From the very start, the food and agricultural systems in our nation have relied on land theft from, and economic and physical exploitation of those who are BIPOC. This remains true today, and harms caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, subsequent recession and policy responses are even more acute for the BIPOC workers who grow, harvest, process, prepare and serve our food. As we pivot to address these challenges, we are seeking advice and leadership from BIPOC communities and BIPOC-led organizations confronting racism in the food and agriculture system. Read 6 Action items for racial equity to learn more and take action.
• We’ve always sought to oppose policies that create health and economic disparities. As we have begun to examine our initiatives with fresh eyes, we are finding ways to do that more effectively. This includes explicitly naming policies as racist when they are at odds with racial equity. It also includes examining how to ensure that our initiatives help others to identify racism in systems and policies. With this in mind, we have begun to update youth advocacy tools to help kids see connections between racism, policies and health disparities, and will equip them to speak out for changes that improve health outcomes not just for their own community but for every child in Kansas City. 
• As a core partner of the National Farm to School Network, we completed their Racial and Social Equity Assessment Tool for Farm to School Programs and Policy. The tool was designed to advance the network’s racial and social equity priority by increasing our understanding of the work in the context of structural, institutional, and interpersonal racism. As a result of that process, we increased engagement of BIPOC communities in the program.  

We invite our partners and supporters to join us in this journey by using the links included in each of the preceding actions, and staying tuned as we post additional progress updates and calls to action. Our collective progress and growth is essential to our ability to advance equity.