SNAP Education

Published: 2020
By Andrea Berry

Big Horn County SNAP-Ed Instructor Andrea Berry was able to teach over 175 nutrition education, cooking, and physical activity classes to youth and adults in schools and in various community settings in the first half of the grant year in Big Horn County and on the Crow and Northern Cheyenne Reservations. When the Coronavirus pandemic began, SNAP-Ed shifted to indirect education and has provided recipes and activities to more than 1,000 youth and their families since March to encourage healthy eating, enjoyable exercise and COVID-19 safety practices. The SNAP-Ed program also works on Policy, Systems and Environment (PSE) projects to address underlying issues that make it difficult for low income people to have access to healthy, affordable foods. The Big Horn County SNAP-Ed program worked on PSE projects with many local, partner organizations to enhance and expand community gardens and gardening efforts in communities on the Crow Reservation and in Hardin; to improve food bank facilities; support healthy, family-centered activities; and start a seed library project to make free, open-pollinated, heirloom seeds available to gardeners throughout the area so they can save their own seeds for future gardens. Permaculture plantings were begun with native food plants as part of local food sovereignty efforts, while more than 200 pounds of fresh produce was grown and donated to food banks in the area as a result of local gardening efforts, and in addition to the food the gardens produced for the gardeners and their families. It was a great growing year!