Share Your Breakfast Campaign

I wrote last week about the importance of breakfast, and I truly believe in the importance of breakfast because when you start your day with breakfast you are setting yourself up for great things to happen. Last week was National Breakfast Week (March 4-10, 2012) and I was lucky enough to attend the Share Your Breakfast event in Orlando, FL on March 8, 2012. I’m excited to share with you all about the event and the campaign.

Kellogg’s created the Share Your Breakfast campaign to reach the goal of helping to share 1 million breakfasts with kids who need them. They chose Action for Healthy Kids as a partner to help increase school breakfast participation.  Every time someone shares their breakfast via Twitter, Facebook etc., they will donate money to help this organization. Because of this partnership and the efforts of many Americans, this campaign has helped increase the number of kids who start their day off right with breakfast.

In my home city of Orlando, FL, Union Park Middle School has experienced a 170% increase in breakfast participation so far this school year.  Nearly 31,000 more breakfasts have been served at this school since the beginning of the 2011-2012 school year. That’s pretty incredible!

In Connecticut, at Putnam Elementary, where more than half of students receive free and reduced meals, far fewer students participated in breakfast than lunch; however, an Action for Healthy Kids grant has allowed the school to incorporate “Breakfast in the Classroom” free of charge for all students, thereby, eliminating the disparity and helping all students succeed.

Even celebrities have caught on to supporting this wonderful cause. Monica Potter, a real-life mother of three who also plays a mom on NBC’s Parenthood, joined the Kellogg’s Share Your Breakfast campaign for the 2012-2013 school year. She was one of the key note speakers at the event I attended and mingled with all of the children while they were eating their breakfasts!

Orlando was not the only city that the campaign hosted Share Your Breakfast Events. Community events were also hosted for local students, residents, and key officials in Battle Creek, Michigan and Washington, D.C. The event lasted an hour and a half and we all ate breakfast together. With the amount of supporters that were at this event and hopefully with all of your help we can continue to help Kellogg’s and Action for Healthy Kids reach their goal of sharing 1 million breakfasts!

What did you have for breakfast today?  Get on Kellogg’s facebook page or tweet your breakfast using hashtag #ShareUrBreakfast. Together, we can make a difference in the lives of children in need and through the power of breakfast we can give them all the chance to better realize their potential each day.