P.E.I.'s Healthy Eating Alliance for schools shuts down early

TheHealthy Eating Alliance on P.E.I. has shut down because it's run out of money.

The non-profit group has been distributing money from the province for school breakfast and snack programs since 2008.

It also does healthy eating education for schools, early years centres and other groups.

But by the end of March the alliance says it had a shortfall, and had to lay off three dietitians.

Now, the $200,000 it receives from the province for food for the school programs has all been dispersed. There wasenough money to cover food until the end of June.

"Schools are receiving and have received their final installment of the food," said Jennifer Taylor, president of the board of directors. "We made sure that that was done.

"But what it means is that we don't have any staff to answer the phone, update the website, to go out to schools, to go out to early learning centres, to put on programming around cooking skills for young parents at family resource centres. It just means there's nobody in the office."

Thinks government should run program

Taylor thinks the program should be managed by the government, as it is in other provinces.

"The money for these positions gets put into the formal system, like it is all across the country," said Taylor.

"There's no such thing as a Healthy Eating Alliance delivering school nutrition policy support or doing breakfast program checks. This stuff is done within government or with an organization like Nourish Nova Scotia where there is funding from government to do that work. Pay staff to do it right."

P.E.I.Health Minister RobHendersonsaidgovernment wants to work with the group to see if it can help "alleviate some of their administrative costs."

Henderson says his department is also looking at whether taking on management of school food programs would be a reasonable fit.

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