In my advocacy work, one of the most important things to find is a person at the school district who can take the lead with whatever you’re advocating for. Without it, you’ll be constantly frustrated at the lack of progress since no one has clear ownership of this particular issue, and everyone is already busy with their own work. You’ll be constantly pounding the table, demanding something be done, but nothing does get done. You may get the runaround, or someone might just politely tell you that there is no one to take ownership of your particular issue. Or there might be a person or group that is supposed to work in the area in which your issue sits, but they either have not bought into it or don’t have time and/or expertise to take it on.
The easiest solution is to be lucky enough to find a district person who is already working on it and believes strongly in your issue to take it on. Whoo hoo! You’re off to the races!
Likely this is not the case.
In my nutrition work, it revealed that the district had little resources or ability to enact changes in this area. Nor was it something that was top of mind for the district leadership. As with many districts, budget is very tight and often personnel for managing health and wellness is not a top priority over that of education and whatever particular community issues exist (here at Palo Alto, those issues are suicide prevention and sexual harassment). Also, our current food services director is a consultant, and so while very good at the work, there is less empowerment to make changes not being a district employee. It also depends on the people involved; many people are great workers, but not everyone is willing to take charge of a new issue and work to make it implemented.
So it’s a long term project as a part of the strategy to advocate continually for more health and wellness support in the district. This definitely should be done and I intend on continuing this effort alongside other efforts.
In absence of a clear district person to take this on, then comes the possibility of finding someone to take it on that is *not* directly related to the issue you’re working on.
What do I mean by that?
In the area of nutrition, it turns out that it has some relationship with climate change issues. We have many groups out there who are much more active and successful at working towards sustainability, conservation, and ultimately climate friendly policies at school districts. At Palo Alto, it happens that there is a huge interest in this area, with a well-attended committee (and even a school board member who sits on it), an actual district person who work on sustainability, and tremendous interest and support from the community as well as other district personnel. They are known for getting things done and so I sought to find a way to align our nutrition efforts with this group.
It turns out that they were already looking at this, but from the sustainability angle, which is to implement Good Food Purchasing Program. If you look on their Program Overview page:
The Good Food Purchasing Program is designed to do for the food system what LEED certification did for energy efficiency in buildings.
The Program provides a metric based, flexible framework that encourages large institutions to direct their buying power toward five core values: local economies, environmental sustainability, valued workforce, animal welfare and nutrition. The Good Food Purchasing Program is the first procurement model to support these food system values in equal measure.
I will post more about food certification groups in another post. Worthy of note here is that we have a well-established group at the district, working on an effort which actually gets our nutrition goals achieved! Perfect!
And so our little nutrition team has joined forces with the sustainability committee to help get this effort done. I have high hopes in the results if/when this food certification starts.
In short, finding someone at the district to partner with on your project is crucial to success. Sometimes, the persons or groups may not be directly related to your effort, so keep thinking on how you can align your project with another more active, existing group.
While sustainability was our most successful alignment so far, other possible groups/efforts that we could have tried to align with – just as examples – are listed below. Note that these are still possible as getting *wide* acceptance only strengthens your advocacy of getting something done:
- Work with disadvantaged populations – there is a strong sentiment at Palo Alto to continue to support disadvantaged populations. One of those is ensuring that these populations are fed well. Over the years Palo Alto has implemented some great programs in providing food for these kids. However, now is the time to work on the quality of what we are giving them.
- Mental health – Palo Alto has a strong effort to support the student population on mental health. It’s where issues like suicide prevention and sexual harassment sit. There is a growing scientific consensus that nutrition can drive in part the state of mental health in our children. There could be more efforts in this area to show that we can help with results if we simply provide better food.
- Education – given that this is a school district, of course education excellence is top of mind. However in 2017, researchers showed that simply providing better food could increase test scores. It’s an area worth diving deeper into for sure.
I look forward to reporting on continuing efforts to find allies across the district.