FAQs and glossary

Answer: It is difficult to commit to attendance at events, as we no longer have staff living in the region. Our international team does make site visits to the region to meet with current grantees and partners, and we would certainly consider invitations if it fits with one of our scheduled visits to the region. Please direct any invitations to Jackie Burkett at int@wkkf.org.

Answer:

We have an international team that continues to manage and evaluate the current W.K. Kellogg Foundation grants in the southern Africa region. We do anticipate that we may provide support to a select number of opportunities that go hand-in-hand with our mission that the Foundation has requested. Some of those opportunities may include some Mission-Driven Investing. The Foundation will not accept unsolicited proposals.

Answer:

The W.K. Kellogg Foundation supports children, families, and communities as they strengthen and create conditions that propel vulnerable children to achieve success as individuals and as contributors to the larger community and society.

Answer:

Physical activity environments refer to places or environments where people can be active. These places or environments can include schools, sidewalks and streets, parks, trails, recreation facilities, workplaces and more. Physical activity environments can also include transit and transportation systems—how people move from place to place without driving. Equally important to physical activity environments are the policies and practices that encourage being active.

Opportunities for physical activity have been designed out of the places we live, learn, work and play—from schools that lack playgrounds or have eliminated physical education classes, to places that have become unsafe for our children. While this is a problem nationwide, in some places a lack of opportunity, limited resources and fear of crime have eliminated outdoor physical activity from children’s and families’ daily lives.

Food & Community envisions a nation where all children and families have safe, accessible places in which they can be active and play. Improvements to our physical activity environments can include building and redesigning neighborhoods with sidewalks, safe streets and quality parks. It can also include instituting policies, which require physical activity and play in our nation’s schools. Supporting physical activity will require civic participation, policy-driven solutions and long-term investments. Efforts must benefit our most vulnerable populations, who experience the greatest health disparities.

Answer:

Food & Community can be thought of as the next iteration of these former bodies of work. Food & Community continues Food & Society’s efforts to create community-based food systems that support local, healthy, sustainably grown food. Food & Community also builds on Food & Fitness efforts to address affordability and access to healthy, locally grown food, and physical activity and play. Like both of the former programs, Food & Community also invests in community-driven policy and systems change work.

As part of a larger body of work at the Kellogg Foundation called Food, Health & Well-Being, Food & Community contributes to two critical pieces of the food spectrum: school food and community food.

Answer:

For more than 80 years, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation has used its voice to advocate for equitable access to good food and physical activity, and to bring meaningful change to our food systems. The Food & Community program continues this legacy through investments that improve the health of our nation’s most vulnerable children by transforming food systems and the places kids live, learn, and play.

Through the Food & Community Program, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation targets investments to improve school food systems, increase access to good food and physical activity, and shape the national movement for healthy eating and active living.

Answer:

To answer this question, we suggest that you contact your program officer to let them know your interest.

Answer:

A food system includes the who, what, where, when and why of our food—from farm to form. Food systems are composed of the many interconnected steps that go into planning, producing, storing, processing, transporting, marketing, retailing, preparing, and eating.

Our current food system is unsustainable and inequitable—from fossil-fuel intensive farming practices, to rural and urban “food deserts” that disproportionately leave low-income communities and communities of color without access to healthy food. This contributes to diet-related chronic illnesses, including heart disease, type 2 diabetes, and childhood obesity, which are crippling our health care system.

Food & Community is committed to transforming our food system to ensure that all children have good food. By good food, we mean food that is affordable, healthy, green (produced in a manner that is environmentally sustainable), fair (meaning no one along the production line was exploited) and locally grown, when possible.