Feeding Hope: Healthy Foods Grant Strengthens Family Wellness

The rising cost of everyday living can make it difficult for anyone to stay focused on achieving their long-term goals, and especially so for parents raising families on limited budgets. Throughout our 44 years of service, CWEE has recognized the importance of helping families meet their basic needs while they work toward financial stability. In recent years, ensuring our families have consistent access to food has become an important element of our program. We are thrilled to share that we now offer an expanded selection of fresh and nutritious foods to the families we serve! This immediately impactful expansion is made possible by a grant from Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids Initiative through the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment.

Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids is a voter-approved initiative that funds organizations working to increase access to healthy food and food-based education for Denver youth. Since its inception in 2020, HFDK has provided essential resources to organizations addressing hunger, nutrition education, and equity in food access. For more information about HFDK, you can visit their website to learn more.

This three-year grant supports our efforts to increase food security for CWEE families by directly funding the purchase of culturally inclusive fresh and shelf stable food for our Resource Room. With this new funding, CWEE doubled the size of our on-site food pantry!

Funding from HFDK allowed CWEE to quadruple the number of shelves in the Resource Room and doubled our fridge and freezer space. Together, we are providing more (and higher quality) fresh food and protein,
as well as a greater variety of culturally inclusive foods to
hundreds of Denver participants and children. CWEE’s on-site food pantry now regularly stocks fresh fruits, vegetables, dairy and meats, as well as a wide variety of legumes, grains, spices, and other pantry staples.

In addition to expanding our food resources, this grant enables CWEE to offer other food-related programs for families. In December, we held our first family cooking class in partnership with Denver Housing Authority. Five families picked up a meal kit from CWEE before the class and joined us virtually from their own kitchens to learn how to cook chicken cacciatore. Parents and children cooked side by side together and were pleasantly surprised at how much they enjoyed this new recipe! The meal was kid-approved, with one parent sharing “Two thumbs up from my kids! They even liked the olives!” We are excited to host three additional cooking classes throughout 2026 as we expand and grow this new program.

Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids also funded the purchase of four Pocket Talk devices to ensure all participants can access food resources. These easy-to-use devices can translate more than 90 different languages. More than 30% of CWEE participants have proficiency in other languages, and there are 20 different languages spoken by our participants. When visitors come to the Resource Room to shop for food, language will no longer be a barrier. Our staff can now easily and confidently serve participants who speak a variety of languages, answer their questions, and help them find specific items.

We are so grateful to the Denver Department of Public Health & Environment and Healthy Food for Denver’s Kids for ensuring CWEE families have the food they need to succeed. Through this partnership, we will expand food access and ensure our participants are equipped with the resources they need to raise healthy families while they seek quality employment.