Mini-Grant Program
Eligible Grantees? The Child Care Community
- For individuals: Family child care providers and child care centers, tribal child care
- For organizations: Child care associations, CACFP Sponsors, Resource and Referrals, Child Care Centers, 501c3’s focused on health and wellness for children
Purpose of Program - For Individuals
The program is focused on providing monetary assistance for implementation of best practices and/or policies for nutrition, health, and wellness in child care environments. Specifically for those individuals who are regularly overlooked as eligible applicants for grant funds.
There are a plethora of existing materials to engage child care providers in conversations to use best practices and create policies but there are monetary roadblocks. It is part of T&L Foundation’s mission to alleviate these roadblocks. Some examples below:
There are a plethora of existing materials to engage child care providers in conversations to use best practices and create policies but there are monetary roadblocks. It is part of T&L Foundation’s mission to alleviate these roadblocks. Some examples below:
- The Child and Adult Care Food Program encourages family style meals – we would provide a grant to assist the family child care provider or child care center with utensils and setting up the environment for family style meals.
- There are many informational resources to educate providers about the importance of physical activity in the child care setting. For example a self-assessment from Nutrition and Physical Activity Self-Assessment for Child Care (Nap Sacc) encourages family child care providers to have 6-7 types of portable play equipment, i.e., jump ropes, wagons, big dump trucks, tricycles, scooters, ribbons, hula hoops, balls bean bags, portable tunnels, etc. T&L Foundation would provide a mini-grant to providers to purchase the appropriate equipment to meet the best practices suggested.
- Breastfeeding in Child Care – assist providers as they encourage breastfeeding with support for moms, nice areas to pump or breastfeed the child, storage and sanitation supplies.
Purpose of Program - For Organizations
The program is focused on providing monetary assistance to enable organizations to educate and/or help providers implement best practices/policies (preferably, but not required, using resources which have already been created). Some examples below:
- Modify existing resources by updating them, changing the format/wording so the audience said organization is trying to reach identifies with it, change it to suit specific programs.
- Trainings – outreach materials and ancillary materials during training which would help the provider implement what they learned at the training.
- Outreach and education materials – modify existing community materials to speak specifically to the program doing the outreach.
- Supplemental materials/training – provide supplemental funds to CACFP Sponsors to include a physical fitness/screen time education during CACFP monitoring visits
- Enable local child care associations to implement a health and wellness education/outreach program for their members and potential members.