2024 Year-End Spotlight

BAYLOR COLLABORATIVE O N

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Baylor Collaborative Senior Director, Grace Norman and Truett Seminary faculty enjoy a meal at the World Hunger Relief Farm

Our

FOUNDATIONAL ROOTS

As the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty recognized its 15th anniversary this year, it remains true to its founding belief that no one sector can end hunger alone. This year provided meaningful opportunities for the Baylor Collaborative to center its activities on the organization’s foundational commitment to strengthening communities in their efforts to cultivate

scalable

solutions

to

end

hunger.

The

Baylor

Collaborative knows that by harnessing the collective impact of non-profit agencies, schools, faith communities, governments, and businesses, we draw closer to the goal of ending hunger across our state, our nation, and our world.

This Year-End Spotlight focuses on the Baylor Collaborative’s work equipping communities – from local to global – to use their shared power and resources to end hunger. From building research tools that help local communities access and understand hunger data to launching training opportunities for community members to lead collaboration and change, the Baylor Collaborative’s approach to this work rests on the notion that we all play a vital role in ending hunger for our neighbors.

Making Hunger Data Accessible for Communities LAUNCHING THE SCHOOL MEALS DASHBOARD This year, the Baylor Collaborative launched its first online, interactive data dashboard — the School Meals Dashboard.

As the first of many data dashboards planned to be released over the next few years, the School Meals Dashboard allows individuals to access school meal data for all 254 Texas counties. This free, user-friendly tool is designed to help individuals and organizations better understand how hunger and food insecurity impact their communities across Texas.

With these tools, community leaders will be able to make informed, data-driven decisions about the work needed to end hunger.

School meals are proven to be one of the best tools to reduce childhood hunger, and this data will be key to

Baylor Collaborative Director, John Puder meets with a family from Aldine ISD during a summer meal kickoff event

identifying opportunities for expansion – ultimately feeding more children across Texas.

UNDERSTANDING COMMUNITY LANDSCAPES

254

Texas counties have access to School Meals Dashboard

One of the first steps to understanding how to end hunger in a community, a state, or a nation is understanding the strengths, resources, and gaps in the current food system. In 2024, the Baylor Collaborative released landscape analyses and reports analyzing: the landscape of community data and resources in Jasper County, Brazoria County, and Willacy County, Texas opportunities for connection of food-oriented community-based organizations and Medicaid Managed Care Organizations across Texas in partnership with Episcopal Health Foundation a comprehensive landscape of the policies, geography, climate, and hunger work in Guatemala

Views from a garden in Guatemala during a meeting with local partners to discuss anti-hunger work and future development of Hunger Free Guatemala, or Guatemala Sin Hambre

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Baylor Collaborative Executive Director, Dr. Jeremy Everett sits on a panel during Bread for the World’s 2024 Advocacy Summit in Washington, D.C.

Equipping Communities for Collaboration and Change HARNESSING COLLECTIVE IMPACT TO END HUNGER Since 2009, Baylor Collaborative experts have worked with communities all over Texas and across the United States to train and equip community leaders to build Hunger Free Community Coalitions –bringing together community leaders, government officials, non-profit and faith community representatives, and businesses invested in ending hunger to scale up their individual impact through collaborative efforts. This year, the Baylor Collaborative launched the beta version of its new Hunger Free Communities Certificate course, providing training and technical assistance to leaders passionate about harnessing their community resources to end hunger.

Utilizing Baylor University’s online education platform, participants who complete the 42-hour course earn microcredentials authorized by Baylor University. Additionally, Baylor Collaborative experts provide personalized technical assistance to community leaders, helping them leverage their collective impact to meet the unique needs of their communities through Hunger Free Community Coalitions.

BUILDING RELATIONSHIPS AND SUPPORTING THE WORK Understanding and supporting the food security-centered work happening across communities is core to the Baylor Collaborative’s mission. Over the course of the year, the Baylor Collaborative fostered relationships and provided training opportunities for some of our most critical hunger heroes: those who feed children. The Baylor Collaborative team helped child nutrition providers learn how to maximize nutrition programs and implement innovative models to reach more children. This year, members of the Baylor Collaborative were privileged to present and speak with audiences across Texas and the U.S. about hunger solutions, including at the: Texas Library Association Conference Food Research and Action Center (FRAC) National Anti-Hunger Policy Conference National Child and Adult Care Food Program (CACFP) Sponsors Association’s Rural Non-Congregate Summer Food Service Policy Update Texas Department of Agriculture’s annual MegaCon (a conference for school nutrition professionals) Umoja Supply Chain Solution’s Mid-South Hunger Conference National Rural Grocery Summit and with 16 of the 20 Texas Education Service Centers (ESCs)

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Partnering to Cultivate Scalable Solutions to End Hunger Collaboration between the public and private sectors is key to scaling meaningful solutions to end hunger. Some of the Baylor Collaborative’s statewide public-private collaborations this year included: Texas Department of Agriculture – The Baylor Collaborative teamed up with the Texas Department of Agriculture to increase outreach and awareness of free summer meals available to children.

Alaska Department of Education and Early Development and the Food Bank of Alaska – The Baylor Collaborative worked alongside the State of Alaska and the Food Bank of Alaska to assist in the implementation of Meals-to-You Alaska, serving over 580,000 meals to 5,300 children in some of Alaska’s most rural communities.

Baylor Collaborative staff alongside a delegation from Kansas following a Hunger Free Coalition training

Hunger Free Kansas – The Baylor Collaborative conducted training sessions with a delegation from Kansas, guiding them through the process of establishing a Hunger Free Coalition. To date, this Hunger Free Kansas coalition has established a core team of strategic partners including universities, advocacy organizations, private businesses, philanthropic foundations, and charitable nonprofits to open discussion on ending hunger.

Alaska

Meals-to-You

580,000

Meals Served

5,300

Children Fed

Building the Next Generation of Hunger Leaders The Baylor Collaborative also works with students, faculty, staff, and campus organizations committed to learning about and ending hunger. The energy and passion of Baylor students are unmatched, and this year, undergraduate and graduate students from various disciplines contributed to the work of the Baylor Collaborative through: Graduate internships in partnership with Baylor’s Garland School of Social Work and Truett Seminary; and undergraduate internships in partnership with the University’s criminal justice minor Graduate and undergraduate student employment across departments and majors – including public health, political science, and business Graduate classes in program evaluation in partnership with the Garland School of Social Work and undergraduate classes in food insecurity and the carceral system with Baylor’s Office of Engaged Learning This year, the Baylor Collaborative organized its first meeting of the Student Food Security Council, consisting of graduate and undergraduate students committed to destigmatizing and humanizing the experience of college student food insecurity through conversation and campus collaborations.

Through its longstanding partnership with AmeriCorps VISTA the Baylor Collaborative provides opportunities to connect VISTA members with non-profits in Texas and other states, offering a year of service to support the respective community’s anti-hunger work. At the beginning of the year former AmeriCorps VISTA member, Katrina Huffman, received the AmeriCorps Legacy of Service Award at the Annual Governor’s Volunteer Awards for her work building an online, clientchoice food pantry with the McCulloch County Hunger Coalition in Brady, Texas.

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Scenes

OF THE YEAR

Baylor President Linda Livingstone, Grace Norman, and Truett Seminary professors and students visit the World Food Programme in Rome, Italy

Former Baylor Bear and current Houston Texans safety, Jalen Pitre and Dr. Craig Gundersen at the Baylor Professionals in Houston event on the role of business in ending hunger

Tasha Roberts, Katherine Best, Rebecca Flavin, and Kayelee Arensman celebrate with a graduate of the Prison Entrepreneurship Program at the Sanders Estes Unit in Venus, Texas

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Cultivating scalable solutions to end hunger

801 Washington Ave, Suite 100 | Waco, Texas 76701 | (254) 710-6900 | hungerandpoverty.org

@BaylorCollaborative

@BaylorCollaborative

@Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty