Share Our Strength

Cooking matters campaign:share our strength's cooking matters program delivers quality food skills and nutrition education to low-income families to help them provide their kids with healthy, affordable meals at home. participants learn to shop smarter, use nutrition information on products, and cook delicious meals on a tight budget. we accomplish this work by 1) leveraging our nationwide network of partners that directly educate families using our cooking matters curricula and resources; 2) making our content widely available to parents and caregivers online and through technology tools that allow them to learn at a pace and time that is convenient for them; and 3) increasing the opportunities parents and caregivers have to access food skills and nutrition education within systems they are already accessing (i.e., healthcare). in fy21, we expanded our content offerings in virtual learning spaces (such as zoom) and our presence on facebook, utilizing more partners and community members as co-presenters and utilizing digital tools to make the content as accessible as possible. we also connected 4.6 million people to cooking matters content in-person and online during the covid pandemic, both through our team on the ground and more than 150 local partners. through our evaluation of cooking matters in-person programming, we know that over 30% of all adult participants intend to let kids help plan, prepare, and serve themselves during meals for the first time; over 60% of all adult participants intend to compare prices, read ingredient lists, and compare food labels to make healthy choices when shopping; and 99% of parents accessing the special supplemental nutrition program for women, infants and children (wic) report the ability to identify wic foods at the grocery store and maximize their wic benefits toward the purchase of fruits and vegetables.