Originally published January 29 2009
Consumer Wellness Center Awards Nutrition Grant to Aid Economically Disadvantaged Teenage Mothers
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger, NaturalNews Editor
(NaturalNews) The Consumer Wellness Center, led by Executive Director Mike Adams (editor of NaturalNews), has announced its fourth grant in its Nutrition Grant Program. The Consumer Wellness Center (CWC) is a 501(c)3 non-profit dedicated to promoting nutrition education. The Executive Director position is a non-paid position.
Our Nutrition Grant Program awards $1,000 grants to individuals or institutions dedicated to the promotion and sharing of nutritional knowledge among children, expectant mothers and other important groups.
The grants are awarded based on the number of people that can be positively impacted, the detail of the grant proposal and the enthusiasm and commitment of the teacher or administrator using the funds. Each award recipient is asked to report the results of the grant program to the CWC. Our intention is then to post these nutrition "success stories" on NaturalNews.com so that the most effective strategies of nutrition education can be shared with the world.
Parenting and Pregnant Teen Program in California
Our fourth Consumer Wellness Center Nutritional grant of $1000 has been awarded to Claire Martin, English and Parenting teacher, at McAlister High School for Pregnant and Parenting Teens, a 501(c)3 non-profit located in Reseda, California.
The Consumer Wellness Center grant will enable Claire Martin to create an educational program that will focus on teaching pregnant teenage mothers how to make healthy food and nutritional choices. This education will serve to better the health of both mother and child; specifically, it will aim to decrease the severe rise of obesity and diabetes seen at McAlister in the last eighteen years.
The grant reward will provide nutrition education both in and out of the classroom. First, teen mothers will attend classes on healthy cooking and food preparation. Then, each student will receive to take home a children's whole foods cookbook that will teach both mom and child how to prepare fresh and nutritious meals daily.
Using the children's cookbook, Claire Martin intends to promote an early introduction in to both good nutritional practices and parent/child reading experiences. Nutritional eating affords health, and early reading with a child develops a foundation for educational success. The time spent reading the cookbook with their children, making the recipes and discussing healthy food choices will help create that important bond between parent and child, which will promote holistic health � body, mind and heart.
Claire has committed to report back to the Consumer Wellness Center with photographs of her mothers and babies and with testimonies regarding the impact of whole food education. She has also promised letters from the students about their various class presentations.
Background on Claire Martin and McAlister High for Pregnant and Parenting Teens
Because of the overabundance of FDA-approved toxic-laden foods that stock the convenience stores where these financially disadvantaged girls typically grocery shop, Claire's students generally have poor diets consisting mostly of excess amounts of salt, fat and sugar. They become entrapped within a downward spiral. The mothers begin their pregnancies overweight and pre-diabetic. Most continue to gain more weight than necessary throughout their pregnancy, and many develop gestational diabetes posing serious danger to both themselves and their children. These poor food choices then continue as they are passed on in the daily lives of their children.
Every school year, Claire Martin and the Pregnant Teen Parenting Program shepherds more than one hundred disadvantaged young mothers and their babies through pregnancy, birth and young parenthood. This Parenting Program has been active and successful since the 1960s, and Claire has been at the helm since the early 1990s. Claire continually provides choices, opportunities, and hope. Now with the nutritional education provided by the grant reward, Claire's teens and their infants will have a chance at an even brighter future � one of increased health and literacy.
Congratulations to Claire Martin of McAlister High School for Pregnant and Parenting Teens for earning our fourth $1,000 nutrition grant from the Consumer Wellness Center.
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