To ensure that elementary school students in Chisasibi have the fuel to power their minds in the classroom, Chisasibi’s Chajishapa Niguuitshtaan (morning bite) program will be heading into its second year.
The idea behind the program is to give all children who haven’t eaten or that haven’t eaten enough that morning a chance to have a healthy snack.
According to Patrick Maillet, a former teacher in Chisasibi and project organizer for Chajishapa Niguuitshtaan, the inspiration for this project came from within the classroom.
“From my experience at the school I had always heard people say that they should start this kind of a program. I had always noticed and known when kids weren’t eating a very good breakfast (if any at all). There was another teacher who was serving his students breakfast in the class next to mine and he had his own toaster and stuff and it made me think that we should really serve the kids something in the mornings,” said Maillet.
While it isn’t difficult to see that any child who is hungry will generally have difficulty performing just about any task, according to research published in the Journal of Nutrition Education, children who ate a healthy breakfast had higher energy levels and better learning ability than students who did not eat breakfast.
And so in going with the old adage, that “breakfast is the most important meal of the day,” the morning snack program came about as a community initiative with the assistance of the Katimavik Program, as well as various entities within the school and the Cree Board of Health and Social Services of James Bay (CBHSSJB).
As Maillet explained, initially the program began as a breakfast program. But after the project organizers surveyed the children at the elementary school they found that almost 90 percent of the kids had actually had some form of breakfast before they headed to school though not every child had had a complete breakfast.
The program’s spokesperson, Elder Charlie Pepanano, also had concerns about the program taking the full responsibility for feeding all of the community’s children every morning.
“He brought out some interesting points such as not to disrespect responsible parents and that he was also afraid that parents would think that they didn’t have to feed their kids if they were being fed at school. It could be a bad habit as if the program were ever to run out there would be kids going hungry,” said Maillet.
With that in mind, the program took on a new form, looking to give everyone a little snack of the food groups they may have otherwise gone without.
Because most of the community’s children would have already had cereal or toast, giving them enough sugars and carbohydrates, filing in the gaps with protein and fresh fruit became the objective.
Now, between the snacks and the already existing milk program, the kids who need it can get a real nutritional boost to help their minds focus on learning.
“What the teachers seem to like is that they can either give the fruit in the morning and then maybe give the protein midway through the day, depending on what it is, like with yoghurt it could be more complicated or just a piece of cheese and then give them the milk in the afternoon and so it really gives them a lot of flexibility,” said Maillet.
“There is also always a little bit of leftover so the school nurse can give extras that to kids who may not have eaten for whatever reason.”
While funding for the food costs have been provided by the CBHSSJB, according to Maillet this program will need more community volunteers to keep it running this year as Katimavik’s mandate has been cut by the federal government.
According to Maillet, however, there are many within Chisasibi who want to volunteer in this program that there confidence that the program will receive the support it needs in the future.
