Our project is focused on developing recommendations to create a best practice cooking class curriculum to address food insecurity among at risk students at Carson Elementary School in Newark, Ohio. Our recommendations are informed by research and three different community partners: Healthy Kids Initiative, an organization within Bon Appetit, the food service provider for Denison University which seeks to educate elementary-aged students about making healthy food choices; Together We Grow, a local Newark non-profit that seeks to educate and provide the community with locally grown foods from neighborhood and school gardens; and Carson Elementary School principal, Julie Elwell. This semester we hosted two different cooking classes with each of our three partners at Carson Elementary School. These classes help inform our curriculum as we will be able to observe each partner's knowledge and expertise. 

Carson Elementary School was recommended to our project by the YMCA backpack program organization due to the high level of need in this community. Carson Elementary has a student body of 480 students with 80% of students living below the poverty line, the highest in the county (Elwell, 2019). There are currently 60 students participating in the backpack program, many of whom also participate in the afterschool program which is why we felt this would be the best candidate to work with. Additionally, their principal, Julie Elwell was supportive and enthusiastic to work with us.

The immediate impact of food insecurity is hunger. We will address the immediate need of food insecurity by providing frozen food recovery meals from the Denison University dining halls, generously donated by Bon Appetit. These meals will be available for participants to take home to feed their families.  The long-term implication of food insecurity is nutrition inequity. Nutrition inequity is an issue not of the quantity of food consumed but of the quality (Ashe, 2012). This is, one can have all the highly processed, non-perishable food to eat, but they can still be food insecure because the quality of what they are eating is very low. This is the trend that food insecurity is moving toward. Government assistance is preventing people from going hungry but it is not providing the necessary tools for the people utilizing the programs to know how to make healthy food choices (Ashe, 2012). Our design will mitigate this through educating participants on how to make their dollars stretch the furthest and teaching them how to make healthy food choices for themselves and their children. The implications of long term nutrition inequity are discussed in Part II of this paper. 

Our goal is to design a program that will give parents the tools to maintain immediate and long-term food security, and give children the willingness to try and enjoy healthful foods and make smart food choices. In the following section, we will review evidence of food insecurity, risks of food insecurity, best practices for addressing food insecurity specific to the community of Newark and the current organizations addressing food insecurity.