HCAT High Fives

Wakefield High School Staff

With the substance abuse issues and lock downs that occurred earlier this month, the staff, teachers, have been put under enormous strain to not only do their job to teach students but also to contend with real life and death issues within the schools and help students and themselves process those realities. While many of these issues, especially substance abuse, are present at all the high schools, Wakefield has had to contend with theirs in a more public way. We send our appreciation and support to Wakefield this month.

Read Early and Daily (READ)

They do amazing work to help our youngest learners and help close the educational and language gap between low income and higher income children and families. This past year has brought about a lot of changes and challenges for READ and they have embraced new opportunities that were born out of those challenges. We appreciate their commitment to offering books that children can see themselves in and make learning accessible to all of our community members. HCAT has collaborated with READ on two StoryWalks and we look forward to future ways to collaborate to incorporate nutrition and physical activity components into reading and sharing books with our youngest learners and their parents.

Lily Duran and Amy Biestek

Lily and Amy co-chaired the HCAT Food Security Subcommittee group. They developed interesting topics and invited informative speakers for the meetings and provided a platform for organizations to share challenges, successes, and ideas. They will be moving on to leadership roles in the new Food Security Coalition and will continue to confidently lead on food security issues in Arlington. Thank you for your time and efforts!

Stephanie Hopkins, DHS Food Security Coordinator

Stephanie has led the Food Security Task Force for the last year and a half and provided strong leadership on food assistance efforts in Arlington. She spearheaded the effort to create Arlington’s new Food Security Strategic Plan and put significant effort into building out the narrative to each of the 28 strategies in greater detail in the report. She created a collaborative atmosphere for the task force and will build and expand on that environment as the new Food Security Coalition is launched in early 2023.

BikeArlington

BikeArlington held a successful Bike to School Bike Fair earlier this month and have been instrumental in encouraging kids bike to school and ensuring they have safe routes to get there. They recently produced an updated bike comfort map of Arlington that provides bike routes for all ages and abilities and make planning a family friendly bike ride easy. Bike Arlington also collaborates with Walk Arlington on many activities, including safe routes to school and bike train information for APS students.

APS Food and Nutrition Staff

Our July HCAT High Five recognizes the efforts this past school year of the APS Food and Nutrition Staff. They have faced so many challenges this year, including staffing during food shortages and supply chain issues and uncertainty over USDA school meal waivers. We appreciate how hard they have worked this past year and beyond to feed our students healthy meals and thank them for their flexibility in dealing with ongoing staffing and logistical challenges.

Lauren Hassel, Safe Routes to School

Our June HCAT High Five goes to Lauren Hassel, the Safe Routes to School Coordinator at APS. She, along with other partners in the county, developed an intergenerational walking school bus pilot program at Oakridge Elementary School this spring. It was recently highlighted on a segment featured on the CBS Evening News. Lauren developed and launched this program with limited funds and volunteer help and I am excited that HCAT will be helping expand this program to additional schools this fall.

Friends of Urban Agriculture (FOUA)

Virginia Foundation for Healthy Youth provides the grant to fund our HCAT activities and asked HCAT’s from around the state were invited to nominate a coalition partner for a Powerful Partner Award. Friends of Urban Agriculture was selected as one of 8 winners in the state. They were nominated due to their efforts to address local food and nutrition security through the Plot Against Hunger and produce bagging programs, their strong collaboration with HCAT coalition partners, and their assistance provided to school gardens that have connected children with nature.

Arlington Public Library

Not only are our libraries functioning to provide books, music, games and learning materials to all residents free of charge, but their role has also expanded more recently as an important community resource. Libraries also offer job search services and small business support, story times for our youngest community members, holding art programs and plant sales, walking tours and book clubs and their Maker Space to appeal to a broad audience. They have also taken on distributing Covid tests in the past couple of months.

The Arlington Community

Our March HCAT High Five goes to….all of us! Two years ago this week, our world changed. As the Covid-19 pandemic began taking hold in our county, schools, businesses, daily life ground to a halt. When schools shut down for an initial period of 3 weeks, very few imagined this would still be top of mind two years later. With an easing current restrictions, we recognize the strength and resiliency of our Arlington community. Not all of us in our community have fared as well as others these past two years, with job losses, illnesses, deaths, learning loss, social isolation and mental health struggles to name a few. But our community as a whole, including non-profits, government agencies, medical professionals, front line workers, businesses and individuals stepped up in ways we could have never conceived before. We all deserve a High Five.

Clothesline for Arlington Kids

Clothesline for Kids has made a significant impact on youth in our community by providing new and gently used fashionable and weather-appropriate clothing for low-income school aged kids in Arlington. In 2021, they provided nearly 30,000 articles of clothing to over 900 students! Clothesline provides a full wardrobe of clothing for each season free of charge for qualifying students K-12. They rely extensively on donations from the community to fulfill requests for clothing, a network of dedicated volunteers to sort and prepare clothing for students and they work closely with school social workers to identify students most in need of clothing.

Phoenix Bikes

Phoenix Bikes is an invaluable community partner in providing youth development programs in Arlington County. Phoenix offers an Earn A Bike program, which includes hands-on instruction in building and repairing used bikes and kids work their way to earn a bike of their own. This not only provide health and physical activity benefits for youth but can also provide an economic impact as well. Phoenix also partners with local community organizations, libraries, affordable housing complexes and more to organize bike safety check events for residents in our community.

Matt de Ferranti, County Board Chair

As County Board chair during this particularly challenging year, Matt has led our community through the height of pandemic cases in Arlington last winter, helped establish free and accessible COVID-19 testing sites, ensured the vaccine rollout was both accessible and equitable and helped secure additional vaccine doses for our County, where demand was especially high. Under Matt’s leadership, the County has helped low-income residents avoid evictions and has helped stabilize and promote small businesses in Arlington.

One of his major initiatives this year was working to address food insecurity in Arlington, and he helped establish, and is an active participant in the Food Security Task Force, which was set up earlier this year to get a clearer picture of the landscape of hunger across the County. As he ends his term as Chair later this month, we recognize his leadership during this difficult year.

Arlington Food Assistance Center (AFAC)

AFAC has served nearly 6,000 families in FY21 with 114,000 food pantry visits. During the pandemic, AFAC saw a 45% increase in referrals and a 35% increase in families served. In response to the pandemic, AFAC started its first-ever home delivery program to serve people in quarantine and also seniors, people with disabilities, and people with compromised immune systems. Since March 2020, AFAC has made over 7,500 deliveries to nearly 500 households and plan to keep the delivery program going in the long-term.

AFAC has relied extensively on volunteers who have continued to assist where needed throughout the pandemic and collaborated with partner organizations to serve clients in a dignified and respectful manner. They are now able to expand their programs to serve even more families in need due to a recently completed renovation of their warehouse. Congrats to AFAC for all of their amazing work feeding families in need in Arlington!

Our Lady Queen of Peace and Sally Diaz-Wells

Our Lady Queen of Peace (OLQP), led by Social Justice and Outreach Minister, Sally Diaz-Wells, has been instrumental in meeting the needs of families in Arlington for many years and have significantly ramped up efforts since the pandemic hit to help more families than ever. OLQP distributes an average of 500 bags of supplemental groceries each week and during the height of the pandemic was providing over 600 bags of groceries to families a week. They also offer a thrift store that provides gently used seasonally appropriate clothing, shoes and household goods at no cost to families in need and offer assistance to pregnant and new moms to provide diapers, wipes, strollers, cribs and formula. Congrats to Our Lady Queen of Peace Catholic Church for all the amazing things you do to serve others!

Read Early and Daily (R.E.A.D)

R.E.A.D is has made a significant contribution to getting books into the hands of Arlington kids, especially in our low-income communities. READ offers a buy a book, give a book model and just in the year 2020, READ distributed nearly 5,500 culturally relevant books to low-income children in Arlington, which was a 400% increase over 2019. She also recently hosted a Read-a-thon this summer that raised over $12,000 to fund a new initiative starting in January called “Baby’s 1st Books” that will provide low-income new mothers with a children’s book each month of their babies first year to help start their children’s library.

Randolph Elementary PTA and Bethany Zecher Sutton

Since the pandemic began, Bethany and the PTA have gone above and beyond to provide support to their school community and have tirelessly run food pantries, clothing drives, provided cleaning supplies and books for families.

Since March 2020, they have opened the Randolph Food Pantry more than 50 times, distributed more than 8,000 bags of groceries, and served more than 300 families and the pantry is run completely by PTA volunteers and are continuing to offer food distribution this summer. The food pantry provides a bag of non-perishable groceries and additional items such as fresh fruits and vegetables, vegetable oil, masa corn flour, cereal, bread, and other staples, including cleaning products, masks, school supplies and books.

Thomas Jefferson Middle School Community Garden

With over 5,000 square feet, the TJMS instructional garden is APS’ largest. Led by Garden Coordinators Reidy Brown and Enid Louise Dunbar, TJ Community Garden and their dedicated crew of volunteers grow a diverse variety of greens, vegetables, and fruits.

Over the past two years, the garden has produced over a 1000 pounds of fresh produce provided to AFAC, Our Lady Queen of Peace and Randolph Elementary Food Pantry. The garden plays a valuable role in feeding our neighbors in need and providing valuable outdoor education to students at TJMS.

Arlington Parks and Recreation

Our May HCAT High Five goes to Arlington County Parks and Recreation who have pivoted immensely in the past year and have provided many new programs to allow for safe participation for everyone in the community. They expanded virtual programs to include physical fitness, art classes, cooking, foreign languages, creative writing, crafts and local history. In addition, they continued offering in-person outdoor nature and physical activity classes throughout the past fall, winter and spring to keep families active and have reopened Arlington’s nature centers. Additionally, summer camps will offer a large variety of activities and topics and utilizing many county facilities and park pavilions to allow for distancing and provide safe gathering spaces for kids.

WalkArlington

April’s HCAT High Five goes to WalkArlington. This spring, they offered a 2nd 8-week walking challenge with almost 400 registrants committed to walking 30 minutes every day. For the walking challenge, they also provide several motivational and inspirational resources with weekly emails and a private Facebook group for accountability. They recently supported National Walking Day on April 7 with over 1,000 registrations in Arlington and they provided a map of hidden gems in Arlington that highlighted history, art and nature spots, among other areas of interest, all throughout the county. They also provide themed walking maps for Arlington and interactive self-guided walks through an app. Congrats to WalkArlington for providing resources to make physical activity an easy choice for everyone and making it fun and educational too.

Kim Durand, Arlington County Department of Human Services

Our March HCAT High Five goes to Kim Durand at Arlington County Department of Human Services! Through her work with the Arlington Partnership for Children, Youth, and Families Foundation and Arlington County, she has been a champion of HCAT for several years and has provided invaluable guidance through the years. She has put in so much effort to build and expand the coalition and was instrumental in securing continued funding for our work in Arlington. She is moving on to a new role in Community Outreach with Arlington County so we know she will have continued success in her new role and we plan to be able to collaborate on activities that help families in need in our community.

Virginia Hospital Center Pediatrics Clinic

This month’s HCAT High Five is Virginia Hospital Center Pediatrics! Their staff, led by Tatiana Zenzano as Medical Director, provides comprehensive, affordable and quality healthcare in a culturally-sensitive environment to children, birth through 18 years of age, living in Arlington County with family incomes at or below 200% of Federal Poverty Level.

They serve approximately 3900 patients in the practice and had more than 14,000 clinical visits last year and around 30% of their patients report being food insecure. In fall 2020, the clinic received grant funding to provide families in need with monthly grocery gift cards for six months and they have partnered with Real Food for Kids to set up a weekly meal distribution site. We appreciate all that the VHC Pediatric clinic has done to address the growing physical and mental health needs of our most vulnerable populations in Arlington, particularly during the ongoing pandemic and extended distance learning.

Claremont Immersion PTA and Melissa Schwaber Hawkins

They have done an incredible job of providing personal hygiene products, cleaning supplies, toys and games, food and warm weather gear to families in need at Claremont Immersion School and beyond! They, and several other PTA-sponsored and faith-based food pantries have stepped up to meet the incredible needs of our community during this time of great need. Thank you for all you do for the community and your significant efforts are so appreciated! 

Aspire! Afterschool Learning

We are proud to recognize the efforts of Aspire to transition from an after school program, to offering on-site distance learning support and after school programming for at-risk upper elementary school children in low income communities. They have a beautiful, bright and welcoming space for kids and they have put in a monumental effort to get everything in place to meet the needs of these students in our community in a safe and healthy way. Congrats to Aspire Afterschool Learning and all of their efforts to support the needs of at-risk students in our community!

Arlington Friends of Urban Agriculture (FOUA)

FOUA has done amazing work through the garden produce drop off and victory gardens to distribute produce to food insecure families in Arlington. And all of those efforts are volunteer driven! In addition, their programming for urban ag month has been outstanding so far and there are still many programs coming up throughout the month. Congrats on a well deserved High Five to FOUA!

Arlington Public Schools

Our inaugural HCAT High Five goes to APS for the extraordinary efforts to get the school year started. This shout out is for the cumulative work of all teachers, administrators and staff, including Food and Nutrition Services, School Health, School Counselors, School Services and IT (who may have had the hardest job of all this past week!) and many others. It was a very heavy lift to get where we are for week 2 and we appreciate all the efforts everyone in APS has taken to make this work. Here’s a screen shot of our virtual High Five from our coalition members! #apsvirginia #APSBack2School #apsinthistogether