This report, commissioned by the Bay Area Geographic Leads Consortium, explores how five county offices of education and local school districts pivoted to reach, teach, and support the holistic needs of students experiencing homelessness during the COVID-19 pandemic. The report documents the rising number of students experiencing homelessness as…

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) is the nation's most important anti-hunger program, providing food assistance to people with low incomes, including postsecondary students, workers, children, people with disabilities, seniors, and many more. The needs of college students have changed drastically over time, requiring more…

The COVID-19 pandemic has increased the need for indirect Extension programming. To ensure a consumer-focused response, we gathered data from 452 survey respondents regarding how the pandemic was affecting their food-related and health behaviors. The majority reported obtaining their food from a grocery store as they had prior to the pandemic,…

This paper shares a participatory action research study conducted by a team of researchers at a university laboratory school in collaboration with three classroom teachers and 60 preschoolers. The team engaged in this research in order to examine the ways in which school personnel could generate more authentic community service experiences with,…

Seventy-five years after the publication of Abraham Maslow's seminal theory on the importance of basic needs (Maslow, 1943), it is now understood that food, housing, and security also matter for college students' learning and success. Sara Goldrick-Rab's (2016) "Paying the Price" cast a spotlight on basic needs insecurity in college,…

Background: We gathered baseline data about student need of healthy, free school food, and if current school meal programming serves students in need of healthy free school food, in anticipation of the completion of a district-wide kitchen infrastructure and educational farm project in a high-poverty urban school district. Methods: We used mixed…

Many students rely on school meals to meet their nutritional needs. Additionally, the economic impact of COVID-19 has resulted in more families needing assistance. The intent and purpose of U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Child Nutrition Programs is to ensure access to meals for students in need. Meal service is expected to continue whether…

The foremost purpose of this empirical study was to explore the role of e-learning in the preparedness of preschool children in the incorporation of the values of sustainable development in pre-school students. The paradigm of the study was interpretivism and the phenomenology design was used for this qualitative investigation. Through the…

According to the most recent data available from the nationally-representative Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), as of 2011, 38.4% of children lived in households reporting at least one form of material hardship, such as food insecurity, inability to pay essential household bills, inability to access medical care due to cost, or…

Background: Alternative food programs have been proposed as solutions to food insecurity and diet-related health issues. However, some of the most popular programs--farmers markets and community-supported agriculture--overwhelmingly serve White and upper-middle-class individuals, exacerbating food security and health disparities. One explanation…

This research brief draws upon the fall 2019 data from the Head Start Family and Child Experiences Survey (FACES) 2019. FACES provides information at the national level about Head Start programs, centers, and classrooms as well as the children and families that Head Start serves. Head Start is a national program that helps young children from…

Almost two years into the pandemic, its widespread impact continues to deepen, increasing poverty and entrenching inequality. While some countries are recovering and rebuilding in a 'new normal', for too many, COVID-19 remains a catastrophe. The unequal rollout of COVID-19 vaccines is putting entire communities at risk. And as new variants…

Children at high risk for going to school or bed hungry are also at risk to develop psychosocial problems at school. These psychosocial problems are associated with bullying. To date, no empirical studies examine the association between going to school or bed hungry (i.e., food insecurity) and bullying. Perceptions of food insecurity are aligned…

In the years after the Great Recession, data on children and families in America showed steady improvement in economic well-being, education and health, although progress in some areas had plateaued, and racial and ethnic disparities persisted. Then the coronavirus hit. The events of 2020 have exposed holes in the safety net of programs and…

Today, as many as two million Uighurs (WEE-guhrs)--a predominately Muslim, Turkish ethnic minority group--in China's northwest Xinjiang Uighur Autonomous Region (XUAR) have been arbitrarily detained in highly-secretive, government-run mass detention centers. After years of conducting intensive surveillance--which included the collecting of…