Healthy fun comes to CCS

To reward students that completed this year’s summer reading camp, Clinton City Schools partnered with Carolina Hunger Initiative to host the No Kid Hungry Initiative for free lunch and a fun day.

The event was held in the Sunset Avenue School gymnasium last Thursday and was chock full of booths that had both fun and healthy activities for students.

Personal trainers and members from the YMCA were there to teach students about easy daily exercises. Students were doing squats, leg lifts and even yoga. There was also matches of rock-paper-scissors interwoven into one of the workout games from the Y.

As students rotated around the booths, they were able to hydrate with nutritionists, whose booths featured water tasting. There, students got their fill on different infused waters such as lime, orange, lemon and cucumber. They were also taught facts on nutrition, and knowledge was tested through a fun trivia game. There were also healthy snacks like apples and baby carrots to accompany the infused water.

With their visit, the Carolina Hunger Initiative, which is a part of UNC-Chapel Hill, brought nutrition interns to interact with students. Together they shared laughs through arts and crafts and made handmade fans out of paper plates, which was much needed to beat that heat.

Carolina Hunger Initiative brought the star of show — Ray the giant sun mascot for the No Kid Hungry Initiative — to play with students.

Tamara Baker, the Project & Communication Director for Carolina Hunger Initiative, was at the event and shared her thoughts on how important the day was.

“The Carolina Hunger Initiative at UNC is very focused on trying to make sure that kids get the access they need to healthy meals,” she said. “That includes all year long during the school year and during the summer months. There are a lot of families that really don’t even realize that they can get healthy meals every day, somewhere around the state. So we’re especially excited that in Sampson County they focus on learning in combination with getting the children to have the healthy meals they need.”

Baker also shared some insight into what Carolina Hunger Initiative is all about, how they operate and why they brought some of their Tar Heel students with them.

“We work with the state agency, the Department of Public Instruction and we partner with the school districts, to try to help them figure out what they need to be able to feed more children,” she said. “We share information back and forth and we try to provide whatever we can for them.”

“We brought with us interns from UNC, who are nutrition students, and they’re teaching the children to get them excited about healthy meal options,” Baker said. “So that’s part of what we do, nutrition education, and the message to the children is that food and fun go together.”

“All summer long we want them to get excited about healthy foods so they’ll make those healthy choices all throughout life and continue to focus on their well being through healthy food.”

Clinton City Schools District Human Capital Director Sheila Peterson was present and helped bring this event together. She’d also share her thoughts on providing a fun and healthy day for CCS students and her gratitude for being to partner with Carolina Hunger Initiative.

“I’m super grateful to all of our sponsors for kicking in and helping us with this event,” she said. “Summer feeding is very important to our community and I hope the parents within the community will come by either Clinton High School, especially Sunset Avenue, and take advantage of our summer feeding program.”

“We are so appreciative to them for supporting us within the pandemic and we’re just grateful,” Peterson added. “This is the end of summer reading camp so this was a great opportunity to show that we appreciate our kids and our community coming in together to help us with the submissions.“