Sodexo Youth Service Grant Approved!!

From guest blogger Carolyn Panzarella....

After hours of working to perfect  answers for the Youth Service America grant, our hard work has paid off!  We were granted our full budget for a workshop with Homeless Children’s Playtime Project.  The grant is meant to address the issue of childhood hunger with the hope that all the programs/projects granted funding will take place around Global Youth Service Day (April 20-22, 2012).  We received a shining report from the YSA staff in our approval letter: “We received many wonderful applications but yours stood out as one of the best.”   We were also mentioned in an article posted on Market Watch with regards to the upcoming project.

The MVPs decided to team up with Homeless Children’s Playtime Project to teach homeless youth about healthy cooking and eating.  The project is properly titled “Chef’s Playtime Project”.  Homeless Children’s Playtime project is a Columbia Heights based program that provides a safe environment for children from shelters and transitional housing throughout DC to play and enjoy healthy snacks.  

In preparation for the project Maggie Riden, of DC Alliance of Youth Advocates , gave a presentation about youth homelessness to the MVPs.  She had the students do an activity where they were given a budget and family situation and had to handle different obstacles that some families have to deal with every day.  This gave the students an idea of how easily one can fall into homelessness.  After, there was a Q & A session in which the students asked Ms. Riden how things would be at the Homeless Children’s Playtime project, and she gave pointers for conversation starters and how the MVPs should conduct themselves.    Chef’s Playtime Project will take place this spring and we hope it will have a positive impact on all those involved.  Thank you to Sodexo for making this project possible.