MAKING ”MOOVES” FOR FOOD SECURITY IN BC

A Club partner since 2018, BC Dairy provides generous bi-weekly donations of fresh dairy products to six Breakfast Club of Canada programs in Chilliwack and Agassiz, British Columbia, ensuring 500 students a day can benefit from increased food access in the region! Thanks to this project, the breakfast program coordinators at each of our partner schools can get creative with their meals and ensure their students have a nutritious and delicious start to their day! 

An integral partner in the BC Dairy project is Seabird Island Community School (Lalme’ Iwesawtexw) just outside of Agassiz, BC, part of the Stó:lō territory. With their large kitchen and full-time culinary staff, Seabird provides meals for 180 Kindergarten to grade 12 students per day, that’s over 1200 breakfasts a week! Coordinator Kim Smith has worked with The Breakfast Club of Canada to expand the reach of BC Dairy’s donations not just to her school, but to as many students in her community as possible, involving Agassiz Elementary Secondary School (AESS) and Agassiz Centre for Education into the project as well. Every two weeks, an order of fresh milk, yogurt and cheese arrives at Seabird, enough for the Club’s 3 breakfast programs in the region. Kim manages and separates the order and arranges the distribution of the food products, ensuring there is absolutely no food waste in the process. Her students’ favourite breakfasts are yogurt & berries, and scrambled eggs with rice, but they’re most excited about Chef’s Special days when their meals are a creative surprise!

Shannon Rigby-Jones (aka Mrs. RJ), the Nutrition Teacher at AESS, works closely with Kim to ensure their students across both schools have what they need for a successful breakfast. Mrs. RJ has incorporated her high school students’ Nutrition classes into their daily breakfast program. These classes prepare hundreds of meals per week, from tropical overnight oats with pineapple, to yogurt and berry parfaits, and protein boxes featuring fresh veggies, cheese, and hard-boiled eggs. This school year, AESS has had to shift their program from a hot breakfast to a grab & go model to adapt to social distancing guidelines, but the good news is that with these new recipes, they are able to offer more meals than ever to their students throughout the day, and exercise creativity in the classroom by playing around with new flavour combinations every week.

“We are extremely grateful to The Breakfast Club, and BC Dairy Association for their generosity and on-going commitment and support of this very important project.  It ensures not only our children at Seabird, but children in surrounding communities as well are receiving the nutrition they need daily.” – Kim Smith