Baylor professor secures federal grant to experiment with summer feeding program
A Baylor University professor has been awarded a three-year, $5 million grant to experiment with using mail delivery for rural youth who qualify for federal food programs.
Kathy Krey, an assistant professor and director of research and administration for Baylor’s Texas Hunger Initiative, received the grant through the United States Department of Agriculture’s Food and Nutrition Service, the university announced.
The agency’s Summer Food Service Program provides nutrition assistance to qualifying students 18 and under. Typically, participants are required to congregate at a centrally located feeding site, such as a school.
“Especially in rural areas, which Texas has a lot of, those meal sites can be less effective because there are transportation, cost or awareness barriers for students who are more broadly dispersed from schools and other potential meal sites,” Krey said in a Baylor news release.
The grant will be used to provide “shelf-stable, nutritionally complete meals, including fruits and vegetables” which will be delivered by mail.
“In communities where populations are centrally located, the site-based model can make a lot of sense, but we know that it’s going to take a lot of innovative solutions to meet the diversity of the problem,” Krey said.
Separately, Baylor announced Thursday that the hunger initiative received a $2.6 million grant from the Walmart Foundation, which has awarded $9.8 million to the organization since 2012.
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Academy of Preachers finds new home at Belmont
The Academy of Preachers – an initiative founded a decade ago with funding from the Lilly Endowment – will continue its mission of identifying, connecting and inspiring young preachers under the auspices of Belmont University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Belmont officials announced Sept. 24 that the school formerly affiliated with the Tennessee Baptist Convention will provide new leadership and programming for the academy, now that the Lilly grant has expired.
Founded in 2009 by Dwight Moody, former dean of the chapel at Georgetown College in Kentucky and an ordained Baptist minister, the academy recently announced plans to close due to lack of funding. Moody retired as president in 2017.
Darrell Gwaltney, dean of Belmont’s College of Theology and Christian Ministry and a long-time supporter of the academy’s work, reached out to the ministry’s board of directors to explore bringing the Academy of Preachers to Belmont. After considering options, the board concurred.
“The Academy of Preachers provides an ecumenical setting for young men and women to explore their call to gospel preaching,” Gwaltney said. “I am delighted with the opportunity we now have to support and encourage the next generation of preachers.”
The university published an article about the transition online.
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Duke Divinity program seeks to strengthen black church leadership
Duke Divinity School has announced it will launch a five-year, collaborate effort to support and expand leadership in the black church.
The project will include scholars and pastoral leaders focused on identifying and developing effective leadership models, the school announced recently.
“This initiative can nurture and facilitate networks of high-quality leaders who cultivate thriving churches that foster flourishing communities,” Divinity School Dean L. Gregory Jones said in a news release published online.
The multidisciplinary approach “can both contribute to the United States becoming a more just country — where none have too much or too little — and inspire faith networks working for the good of humanity across the country and around the world,” Jones said.
Participants will use existing research into black church traditions and examples of effective leadership in those congregations to create and train “effective leaders for the black church of today and the future.”
Leading the project will be David Emmanuel Goatley, research professor of theology and black church studies and director of the Office of Black Church Studies at Duke Divinity School.