The vision of the child nutrition department at Phoenix #1 is to influence life-long eating habits and improve students’ overall health and well-being. Our mission is to support academic excellence by providing high-quality nutritious food to students.

Downtown Phoenix is defined as a food desert; that means that local residents have to travel more than one mile to access a grocery store. During the summer, children tend to eat unhealthy food, increase sugar intake, and eat fewer vegetables compared to the regular school year. Inadequate consumption of healthy food is associated with negative outcomes relating to academic, behavioral, and cognitive abilities. We understand many barriers exist that limit children and youth from accessing nutritious food during the summer. We understand hunger does not take a vacation and our desire is to actively address nutritional inequities.

In partnership with the Phoenix #1 transportation department, a mobile feeding bus will service the local community to provide meals to children ages 18 and under at no cost. By establishing a mobile feeding bus, we hope to provide easier access to healthy meals for children and youth during the summer. During the non-summer months, the child nutrition department will utilize the mobile feeding bus to offer various nutrition-education-related activities in order to enhance students’ nutrition knowledge. The nutrition education lessons will introduce easy preparation techniques to our students when learning how to cook and prepare vegetables and assorted fruits, with lessons centered on math, science, social studies, and English. We hope the implementation of the mobile feeding bus will provide our community with the opportunity to gather and strengthen relationships with food and individuals.