Little Rock realigns anti-obesity program

UALR student interns to deliver services in LR schools

Little Rock is entering into a partnership with the Little Rock School District and the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to continue operating the Love Your School childhood obesity prevention program at eight elementary schools.

Previously, the city had a partnership with Ameri-Corps, a national volunteer organization, which provided young adult volunteers to take the program into the schools. About 4,000 students in kindergarten through fifth grade are served by the program.

Love Your School involves building gardens at the eight partner schools; teaching the children how to grow, cook and eat fruits and vegetables; teaching nutrition classes in the schools; and hosting community events such as a student-run farmers market, cooking classes for parents and health fairs twice a year at each of the schools.

That five-year commitment with AmeriCorps has run out, so the city tested a number of options to fill the gap in the schools, finally settling on partnering with UALR to have undergraduate students take over the roles of the AmeriCorps volunteers.

“In looking for options and alternatives … we looked at volunteers, part-time employees, the option to bring in substitute teachers, and all the principals we worked with agreed and advised us not to do any of those anymore,” said Michael Drake, the city’s chief services officer responsible for coordinating the program. Drake said the educators suggested he look at partnering with the University of Arkansas at Little Rock to recruit education and health-profession students to deliver the services.

The program will use up to 36 interns from the College of Education and Health Professions this calendar year as a trial to see how the partnership works out.

The city will pay up to $110,216 to the university for the undergraduate interns and up to $111,410 to the Little Rock School District’s partner schools to operate the program.

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Little Rock Mayor Mark Stodola said the partnership with UALR is going to be “a great marriage.”

“This is the city reaching out and actually providing actual clinical work in the schools with the partnership. Sometimes that doesn’t get on the front page, but the city of Little Rock reaches out to schools in many, many ways, and this is one of the great ways we’re doing it,” Stodola said.

The dean of UALR’s College of Education and Health Professions didn’t return a request for comment Tuesday.

The idea of the Love Your School childhood obesity prevention program started with a 2010 grant the city received to develop a plan to address the city’s three most pressing needs. Those needs were determined to be childhood obesity, neighborhood stabilization and environmental sustainability.

The $200,000 grant money was used over a two-year period to start three initiatives: Love Your School, Love Your Block and the Little Rock Volunteer Park Rangers program.

In 2013, Little Rock received a $100,000 Bloomberg Philanthropies Fund grant to extend the Love Your School program to the eight high-poverty kindergarten-through-5th-grade elementary schools it is in now.

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