Outreach to children, families, and other organizations is an essential tool that you can use to get kids to your summer food program. There are many outreach activities that you may find useful whether you’re promoting one local site, multiple sites across a school district or county, or working regionally or statewide on behalf of many different sponsors. 

• Make the general public aware of the availability of your program and its benefits to the community.

• Make families with children - your target audience -aware of your program and how to access it.

• Help you establish partnerships with other community organizations to increase support for your program, engage volunteers and encourage collaborative efforts.

Messaging

The first component of a well-designed outreach strategy should be an effective message. A message is a brief, straightforward statement describing your program and should take into account which words and images are most likely to motivate people in your target audience to participate.

Building your outreach strategy around one or two simple, easy to remember messages can bring clarity and focus to your campaign. And, if more than one sponsor is operating in the same area, getting everyone to talk about their programs using similar language and images can help diverse sites present a uniform front to the public.

Multnomah County provides one example of successful use of an outreach message: With an average of six to eight sponsors typically operating more than 100 sites countywide, it was becoming hard for parents to figure out how to access sites offered at a wide range of different sites. The Oregon Hunger Relief Task Force (OHRTF) and the Multnomah County Commission on Children, Families and Community (CCFC) brought together sponsors and outreach partners to work on a coordinated outreach campaign using a single slogan: “Project Summer: Everybody Eats.” This is accompanied by simple messages letting everyone know that sites countywide offer “free food and fun under the summer sun.” Most sponsors now use this on posters, banners, and fliers, along with a statewide hotline number and some attractive images provided by the CCFC. This change has helped create a public image of one unified effort to feed kids. The emphasis on “free food and fun” in the message has also helped change public perception of the program, making it more like a free day camp and less like a charity program.

Teen Messaging
If you’re planning to try and specifically reach middle school and high school teens, you should keep in mind that they are often the one to make the decision about summertime activities. If that’s the case, consider incorporating images and/or messages into your materials that are likely to appeal directly to them. If you’re not sure what might work best, try talking with successful programs that work specifically with youth in this age range.

Repetition and Simplicity

One last point to make on messaging: people need to hear a message over and over again to retain it, as many as seven times or more, before they act on it. Additionally, simple repetition builds comfort and familiarity with ideas and organizations over time, making the repetition of a well-formed message an important tool in persuading a target audience. Using the same message repeatedly promotes retention more effectively than using multiple messages.

Methods for Targeting

Once you’ve decided on your messages, it is time to decide what methods you’ll use to convey it to people in your community or region. It may help you to think about delivery methods and audiences in terms of scale: on a neighborhood or school level, citywide, countywide and beyond.

Neighborhoods and Schools

Schools

At the neighborhood or school level, a great place to start is local schools – that’s where your target audience is, and it is often a trusted source of information for parents. Prepare fliers, newsletters articles or other materials incorporating your message and make sure they are sent out before the end of the school year. Be sure to try and get something included on the final lunch menu of the year. Some programs suggest preparing stickers with program information that can be stuck on the shirts of the youngest students during the last week of school. A flier stuck in the backpack may not be seen at home, but a prominently placed sticker just might!

Public Places
Beyond the school walls, try sending out people around your site to hand out fliers and hang posters in public places.  It’s best if you can find staff or volunteers who know the neighborhood well. This is a great way to use volunteers—try approaching local service groups, teen clubs and other associations.

Doorhangers—specially designed fliers with site information designed to be left on doorknobs, speeding up neighborhood canvassing efforts—also work well for local campaigns in some areas.  Some sponsors, however, report that this sort of distribution is not welcomed in their area. If this is something you haven’t done before, you may want to talk to other groups, such as political campaigns or local businesses, about how this has worked for them.

Neighborhood Associations
If you have neighborhood associations or small local papers, don’t forget to contact them. They may be happy to include you in a meeting or run information in an upcoming publication!

Whatever you decide to distribute, make sure to use language(s) spoken by local families and keep the message and images used welcoming and fun.

On Site Stategies
On-site outreach strategies are just as important as all other forms of local outreach.  The use of these adds visibility to your site, builds enthusiasm in participants and encourages kids to keep coming back and to bring along their friends.  Try passing out flyers at the site, having a big and highly visible banner at your site that attracts kids passing by, or having fun activities that keep the kids coming back for more. Some sites have also found that incentives work well to keep kids returning and attract new ones: special events, visitors, bike or other raffles, theme days, etc.

Word of Mouth
One other critical but often overlooked local outreach strategy: word of mouth.  Parent and child surveys consistently indicate that many found out about the site from friends or family. This effect is even more pronounced when the site runs smoothly and offers popular programs, and participants are encouraged to tell as many friends and relatives as they can about your program. Consider producing small cards with your program’s information that you can hand out to children and parents to encourage and remind them to tell friends about the great resource that you have to offer!

Case Study: Parkrose School District Contact: Trevor Todd Phone: 503-408-2640 Email: This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it Parkrose High School began its Summer Food program with only 30 youth. Because of high transportation costs, they needed to serve more children or risk being closed down by their sponsor. Instead of sitting idly by, students and staff, realizing that they could capitalize on their location at a high-traffic intersection, began a “street outreach” campaign to increase participation. Teens at the school created big banners and stood at busy intersections, letting people passing by know that all kids were welcome to join in the free food and fun! Other teens and staff took Summer Food information around to local businesses and asked them to display flier. The teens also starting helping with activities and crafts to keep everyone entertained. It is interesting to note the strong teen involvement in this program as this is a group that tends to shy away from meal sites. As they have been given more responsibility and input into the operation of the site, teen participation has increased. And having all those “cool” older kids around is helping pull in some of the younger children as well. Sites having trouble reaching this older age group may want to think about ways to incorporate more teen input into site operations. By the end of summer, participation increased to 130 children per day, making them one of larger sites in the area. The great attitudes of the staff, everyone’s willingness to pitch in, and the extra time they took to do their street outreach all made a wonderful impact. It was a simple idea, but it had huge results!

City, County and State

Working to promote summer food sites over a wider area, such as across a city or county takes more coordination but can have a big payoff. Using the local outreach strategies will still help you get kids to individual summer food sites, but there are some additional techniques for promoting summer food in a bigger geographic area.

Regional Service Providers
In these cases, look for regional service providers who might be willing to give information on your program to their clients. Try WIC offices, food stamp offices, local health departments, any social services aimed at children or families, Parks and Recreation department, libraries, etc. There may be government agencies or nonprofits that can help with regional outreach, and combining resources is always effective. Your time and money can often be spent most effectively when you can pass the information on to one or two people who have access to a network of hundreds or even thousands of people in your target audience.

Community Events
Watch for community events such as fairs, festivals, carnivals, etc. where you can distribute information to many community members. If your city has a Craigslist page (www.craigslist.org), you may also want to post special events or even just your daily site information on their events page.

Local Media Outlets
Don’t forget to send information to local media outlets, including both local TV and radio. Working with the media is not as hard as you might think. The SFSP is GOOD news, and many stations and papers are looking for more stories like these.  

Speaking of media, radio and television stations are required to allocate a certain portion of their air time to free public service announcements—in other words, announcements or information about programs just like yours! They may even be able to help with production. Keep in mind, however, that you will likely not have much control over when announcements hit the air. Contact the stations directly to find out what the process is.

Organizations and Individuals
For organizations and individuals interested in helping with outreach on a regional or statewide level, there are a number of things that can be done to increase summer food attendance. If there are already statewide organizing efforts going on in your state, the best thing to do is connect with those.

In Oregon, the OHRTF, Oregon Department of Education (ODE) and Interagency Coordinating Council on Hunger are lead outreach partners at the state level.  Statewide efforts currently underway include: 

• Oregon SafeNet: ODE and/or sponsors provide site lists to this statewide phone hotline (phone: 1-800-SAFENET or 1-800-723-3638). Families can call toll-free statewide to find out the location of the nearest site. If desired, they can also obtain information on a number of other assistance programs. This phone number is a great resource to use for any outreach materials that might be distributed beyond a specific geographic area.

• Mailings to regional or statewide networks: currently OHRTF and Oregon SafeNet work with the Department of Human Services to place information in mailings to clients. WIC also distributes information to their clients.

• Internet: In June 2006, OHRTF will launch a new summer food website (www.summerfoodOregon.org) to provide statewide site lists. Some sponsors also provide site lists on their own website.