Hunger Task Force Community Nutrition Education Empowered Healthy Choices For Families, Students and Older Adults in 2025
At Hunger Task Force, we know that ending hunger takes more than food alone. It takes knowledge, confidence and access to tools that help people make choices that support their health, culture and medical needs. That belief drives our Community Nutrition Education program, and in 2025, its impact reached thousands of Milwaukee neighbors.
Nutrition education is a core part of Hunger Task Force’s mission. While we work every day to provide free, healthy food across Milwaukee County, we also recognize that long-term food security depends on education. From classrooms to senior centers and food pantries to community kitchens, our nutrition educators met people where they were and offered practical and empowering education designed to last far beyond a single meal.
Our program focuses on helping students, families and older adults:
- Understand how to build balanced meals
- Stretch food resources with confidence
- Prepare meals that align with cultural traditions and medical needs
- Feel empowered when selecting groceries or pantry items
- Build lifelong skills that support health and independence
Education is delivered through in-person classes, school-based learning, community demonstrations and digital resources and is always grounded in dignity and real-world application.
This year, Hunger Task Force connected with 946 students across eight schools and 17 classrooms to bring nutrition education directly into learning environments. Students participated in classroom visits and curriculum support, hands-on field trips to the McCarty Education Kitchen and immersive experiences in the School Garden at the Hunger Task Force Farm. Lessons sparked curiosity, reinforced healthy habits and helped kids see food as something they can understand, grow and prepare themselves.
Nutrition education also plays a vital role for families and older adults navigating fixed incomes, chronic health conditions or limited access to nutrition information. In 2025, Hunger Task Force nutrition educators taught 93 in-person classes for families and older adults at our headquarters and across the community at a variety of settings including senior centers, meal sites, food pantries and senior housing locations. Classes focused on practical cooking skills, label reading, meal planning and adapting recipes to meet dietary needs.
At food pantries and partner sites, educators distributed hundreds of healthy recipe samples and transformed pantry visits into opportunities for learning, inspiration and confidence-building.
Altogether, 3,932 community members received direct nutrition education through Hunger Task Force this year. Thousands more engaged with our growing digital resources exploring recipes on social media, browsing nutrition education handouts, visiting our website or cooking meals from the Healthy Families Cookbook in their own kitchens.
As we look to the future, Hunger Task Force remains committed to strengthening and expanding community nutrition education. We will continue to strategically digitize and distribute more content to ensure neighbors can access trusted information anytime, anywhere.
We are also expanding recipe development to better reflect the cultural traditions and medical needs of the communities we serve while connecting even more Milwaukee neighbors to the tools and skills that help them make informed decisions when selecting food and preparing meals at home.
Hunger Task Force is Milwaukee’s Free & Local food bank and Wisconsin’s anti-hunger leader. The organization’s core values are Dignity, Justice, Equity, Compassion and Stewardship. Hunger Task Force feeds people today by providing healthy and culturally appropriate food to hungry children, families and seniors in the community absolutely free of charge. Hunger Task Force also works to end future hunger by advocating for strong public policies and nutrition programs at the local, state and federal level.