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URI's Donna LaVallee to help battle hunger for Rhode IslandersA one-woman army is battling hunger in the state. Her name is Donna LaVallee, a member of the University of Rhode Island's Food Science and Nutrition Department, who has been designated Rhode Island's Community Food Security Liaison by the U.S. Department of Agriculture. LaVallee's job is to help people become food secure, defined as when people at all times have physical and economic access to enough food to meet their dietary needs for a productive and healthy life. Armed with information and great organizational skills, LaVallee will help Rhode Island's communities tackle both immediate hunger and its root causes. She will serve as a point of contact and provide assistance to any entity wanting to engage in new activities to bolster community food security. She is also charged with improving USDA coordination among such programs as food stamps, Women, Infants, and Children (WIC), community gardens, farmers' markets, school meals, nutrition education, and local research within the state. She will report state data on community food security biannually and participate in national, regional, or local food security-related meetings. USDA's nationwide Community Food Security initiative is designed to help communities build their local food systems, reduce hunger and food insecurity, improve nutrition, and move low-income families from poverty to self-sufficiency. The appointment as the state's Food Security Liaison is not a new hat for LaVallee. It's more of a feather in one she already wears. A licensed dietitian/nutritionist, LaVallee supervises URI's successful Cooperative Extension-Expanded Food and Nutrition Program (EFNEP), which celebrated its 30th year earlier this year. The program is tailored to the needs of limited resource families and helps them acquire the skills they need to improve their diet, at no charge, and right in their own neighborhoods. That program, funded by the USDA, began with 46 families in 1969. Since then, URI estimates that the program has served more than 30,000 families or about 120,000 individuals. In addition, since 1975, the University has brought the program into schools and has taught nearly 37,500 youngsters. Last April, LaVallee coordinated a "Town Meeting" on hunger which was televised from the URI Providence Campus. Following the televised meeting, LaVallee helped form a statewide Food Security Coalition composed of farmers, hunger advocates, nutritionists, emergency food providers and educators. By Jan Sawyer |
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