Learnings from the Rural Child Hunger Research and Innovation Lab

Child Rights Resource centre

Learnings from the Rural Child Hunger Research and Innovation Lab Share:
By: Beth Eagleton
Last updated: 2025-03-20T14:41:28
Learnings from the Rural Child Hunger Research and Innovation Lab is a series of reports, telling the stories from five community organizations across the US that implemented innovative ideas to address food security in rural communities. The learnings and recommendations will be helpful for practitioners implementing place-based approaches to improve food security for children in rural spaces. 
Photo: Mary Ben, Bidii Baby Foods
After corn is harvested, it is steamed overnight in pits 8 feet underground, brought up in the morning, then laid out to dry. Once dry, the corn can be ground into the form used in Bidii Baby’s Neeshjhizhii Bi'taa'niil, or baby food hot cereal blend.
Videos: See Innovation Lab Partners in ActionVideos: See Innovation Lab Partners in Action
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LAB OVERVIEW In 2023, Save the Children US Programs embarked on a one-year journey to catalyze community-driven innovations to improve rural children’s access to food. We funded five community partners from California, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, and West Virginia to design and test innovative solutions for a year.  The five partners committed to co-designing solutions with their respective communities, leveraging local expertise by building trust, facilitating collaboration, and staying responsive to local needs.
Through our partnership with the Baylor Collaborative on Hunger and Poverty, we worked with Dr. Craig Gundersen, a leading food security researcher in the U.S., who supported the Lab to perform the final project evaluations.
The lab reports highlight innovative partnerships developed as part of the initiative and lessons learned regarding finding partners and navigating logistics within a tight timeframe. The reports also provide several examples of the use of human centered design to improve program effectiveness. A year was too short a timeframe for most programs to achieve more than limited outcomes, however many lessons were learned along the way. These are highlighted in this report along with recommendations to strengthen the initiatives going forward.
Human centered design One of the commitments of the Lab – from SCUS to grantees, and from grantees to communities – was to leverage community expertise. Through a human centered design training provided by IDEO.org, grantees learned how to consider children and families not only as users of programs, but as co-creators. Grantees incorporated human centered design into their project design as they listened and created solutions based on participants’ needs and aspirations.
What’s Next? Among these innovations, the Mountaineer Food Bank piloted a successful food box home delivery approach in partnership with a school district and Door Dash. This innovative idea was identified to show promise in impacting food security for rural families. In 2024, Mountaineer Food Bank expanded their program to a second county with a modified delivery method. Save the Children is supporting their second year of implementation in 2024 and will aim to share findings through an evaluation report in the future.
Have Questions? Please contact Anita Drever, adrever@savechildren.org
Innovation Lab Grantee Report: Bidii Baby Foods2024 · Save the Children
Bidii Baby Foods, a business and innovation lab grantee located in San Juan County, New Mexico, grows traditional foods and sells those foods at local markets and to local school... View Full Abstract
Innovation Lab Grantee Report: Delta Fresh Food Initiative2024 · Save the Children US
Innovation Lab Grantee, Delta Fresh Foods Initiative (DFFI), proposed the Bolivar County Good Food Revolution—From Farm to Table as a collaborative designed to revive ownership of... View Full Abstract
Innovation Lab Grantee Report: Mountaineer Foodbank2024 · Save the Children US
In urban areas, food delivery services help families surmount these barriers. Due to long distances and sparse populations, in rural areas, food delivery services are generally... View Full Abstract
Innovation Lab Grantee Report: Robeson Fresh Moves2024 · Save the Children US
The Innovation Lab grantee, Robeson Fresh Moves initiative—a collaboration between Southern Carolina Housing (the nonprofit arm of The Housing Authority of the City of Lumberton)... View Full Abstract
Innovation Lab Grantee Report: San Diego Hunger Coalition’s Navigator Program2024 · Save the Children US
The San Diego Hunger Coalition (SDHC) used funding from Save the Children&#8217;s Innovation Lab to train local leaders from a low-income, rural community along the U.S.-Mexico... View Full Abstract

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