This season, give the gift of quality, healthy meals in child care settings.

In child care centers and family child care homes across San Francisco, lifelong eating habits are taking root.

A toddler is trying broccoli for the first time. A parent is learning a quick, healthy option for dinner. A classroom is turning snack time into lifelong healthy food preferences. These are just a few of the ways our Healthy Apple Program is changing the lives of our city’s youngest residents.  

Yet, this program faces significant funding challenges, putting our children’s health and well-being at risk. 

As federal and state nutrition programs like SNAP face uncertainty, Healthy Apple is more critical than ever. Free to early educators, the Healthy Apple Program advances nutrition security by supporting child care educators to create healthier environments for young children. Through training, policy support and hands-on technical assistance, the program ensures that children receive the nourishment they need to grow into healthy adults.  

Many children spend up to 50 hours each week in child care, where they receive 50 to 70% of their meals. For some children, our program provides the only balanced, nourishing meals they receive all day. 

That’s exactly why Healthy Apple matters. 

By fostering healthy habits in early childhood, Healthy Apple supports long-term wellbeing and helps prevent diet-related diseases in adulthood. In San Francisco, 31% of low-income preschoolers are already overweight, a staggering reminder of how early health inequities begin.    

This holiday season, please make a generous gift to Children’s Council – Your donation today helps to ensure that child care and early education settings remain in places where children can receive healthy meals and develop healthy habits that last a lifetime.  Together, we can safeguard the programs that nurture healthy beginnings and lifelong impact for every child. Thank you for your support.