The Kings County Healthy Eating in Recreation and Sport Settings Committee (whose membership includes all of the recreation directors within the County of Kings: the Town of Wolfville, the Town of Kentville, The Village of Canning, The Village of New Minas, the Town of Berwick and the Village of Kingston), along with our municipal partners, is proposing an inclusive, universal lunch program for 2 of the day camp locations in Kings County (Kentville & Berwick). The design of the universal lunch program has been developed by 3rd year Acadia nutrition students, and we are basing our program on their nutrition engagement strategy.
Last summer several camp directors noticed the issues around food security at day camps. Some campers would show up with food containing no nutrient value, with very little food in general or with no food at all. Others hid during lunch and snack times because they were embarrassed about what they had or didn’t have. Our goal for this project is to provide all campers who attend the day camps with an appealing, healthy, accessible and affordable lunch and to increase the knowledge surrounding healthy eating for the campers, and their families.
In order to successfully implement the universal lunch program, we would hire an additional staff member to make the lunches, target local businesses to help fund the lunch program, and purchase additional resources that are necessary to prepare, store and transport the food for the program. They would also be responsible for working with the supporting dieticians to develop information pieces to go in each campers snack bags to bring home. Ultimately, as a result of the inclusive strategy for day camp lunches, we would like to provide a supportive food environment, see all campers have more energy throughout the camp day, reduce the stigma faced by some campers, and expand the campers and their parents’ knowledge surrounding healthy eating.