by Brooke Smith
Michelle Obama is stepping up the fight against childhood obesity — and today's press conference marks the official beginning of a national initiative “to raise awareness of the need for children to have healthier schools, more exercise, access to affordable healthy food, and the knowledge to make healthier choices on their own."
WHY's friend and partner, Will Allen of Growing Power, will join the First Lady, Judith Palfrey, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Willis “Chip" Johnson, mayor of Hernando, MS in launching the campaign at 11:30 EDT. (See press release below for details.)
We are especially excited to see Mississippi represented, as WHY has partnered with Delta State University and Mississippians for Greener Agriculture (MEGA- also a regional outreach training center for Growing Power) to create the Delta Fresh Foods initiative. Delta Fresh Foods is working to empower local efforts to transform the regional food system and bring healthy food back to their communities. As Allen says, “There is a real shame and irony in that even in the rural countryside, in a rich, fertile place like the Delta, so many people don't know how to grow or find good food anymore, or they've been taught not to want it. We have to grow our way back to the model that made us a strong nation, and once upon a time a healthy one. That is, knowing how to raise our own food and supporting farming neighbors in and around our communities by encouraging them to grow healthy crops for people instead of commodity crops for industry."
Will Allen to Take Stage with First Lady
Milwaukee – Feb. 8, 2010 – Growing Power founder and CEO Will Allen will be one of three featured speakers sharing the podium Tuesday with First Lady Michelle Obama at the White House as she officially announces her national initiative to fight childhood obesity.
Allen joins Dr. Judith Palfrey, president of the American Academy of Pediatrics, and Willis “Chip" Johnson, mayor of Hernando, Miss., in launching the effort to raise awareness of the need for children to have healthier schools, more exercise, access to affordable healthy food, and the knowledge to make healthier choices on their own.
The campaign, first broached publicly last month in the First Lady's keynote speech to the National Council of Mayors and also mentioned in President Obama's State of the Union address, becomes official with Tuesday's event, which begins at 11:30 a.m. EDT (10:30 CDT). Sportscaster and former New York Giants running back Kiki Barber will introduce the speakers.
Allen, whose Growing Power urban farm and food systems training center operates in an underserved area of Milwaukee, plans to speak about the need to create new infrastructure to grow food in cities and new networks to channel food from diversified local farms into communities to improve access to fresh foods.
“We need to look at this as a critical challenge from birth, even from before birth," Allen said. “From pre-natal nutrition to what children are being fed in daycare centers, to kindergarten and all through the grades, we have to ask ourselves why we are settling for poor food for our children. We have to institutionalize good food in our schools, and not only in the cafeteria but in our teaching every day.
“We also need to be able to grow food year-round where it's needed, despite the climate, the way we are doing it here at Growing Power in Milwaukee. We need to scale up these efforts, growing good soil, growing good food, growing the relationships necessary to distribute and deliver this food to people."
Palfrey will speak to and for the medical community on the necessity of addressing childhood obesity as an epidemic disease.
Johnson will relate his efforts to change unhealthy habits that had led his community in northwest Mississippi to have the highest rate of childhood obesity in the nation.
Allen, who has created a Growing Power-style Regional Outreach Training Center in nearby Mound Bayou, Miss., said, “There is a real shame and irony in that even in the rural countryside, in a rich, fertile place like the Delta, so many people don't know how to grow or find good food anymore, or they've been taught not to want it. We have to grow our way back to the model that made us a strong nation, and once upon a time a healthy one. That is, knowing how to raise our own food and supporting farming neighbors in and around our communities by encouraging them to grow healthy crops for people instead of commodity crops for industry."
