Interdisciplinary Baylor partnership to study best ways of reaching and serving hungry children

We covered Baylor’s Texas Hunger Initiative in depth back in the spring, describing how the program (begun in Baylor’s School of Social Work in 2009) is working to develop a reproducible model that significantly reduces hunger by maximizing efficiency in current state programs.

Thanks to a $2 million grant from the Walmart Foundation, THI staffers will now be aided by a team of researchers from Baylor’s Hankamer School of Business as they seek ways of making summer and afterschool meal plans more efficient so that more children can be served. The team, led by Drs. Jeff Tanner and Stan Madden, will work to develop a sustainable and replicable business model that could possibly stream the summer and afterschool federal child nutrition programs year-round. Both are marketing professors at Baylor, and Madden leads the university’s Center for Non-Profit Leadership and Service.

The grant also provides for THI to place a dozen new staff members in offices around the state, with each new employee focused on increasing participation in summer and/or afterschool child nutrition programs.

Universities are the perfect place to support such interdisciplinary work, and when it comes to feeding the hungry, what better place than a Christian institution like Baylor?

Sic ’em, THI and Hankamer professors!