There are more children who lack food security in Pima County than there are students in Tucson’s largest school district. Steven Cota-Robles hopes to reach those 40,000 children one day, but for now he’s starting by feeding 250 every week, and making sure students aren’t just getting handouts.
“As dire as the situation is right now, you can’t just hand out food to kids. When you hand out food, as soon as they’re done eating it, that thing you’ve given them is gone,” he said.
In 2021, Cota-Robles had had 15 years of experience working in a major grocery chain and was looking for a way to connect food with children’s needs. After reading statistics on childhood hunger and talking to his educator friends, Cota-Robles knew he had to come up with a creative solution.
Then he had an epiphany: “I have nieces and nephews that are on YouTube all the time and I was fortunate enough to take home [economics] in middle school and I was like ‘Why can’t we teach home ec to kids in their own homes through YouTube?’” Cota-Robles said.
So he made some connections at several Tucson schools, and began delivering free meal kits to students every Friday, and posting simple how-to dinner videos to get kids in the kitchen cooking for their families. Thus was born the Tucson Family Food Project.
“I actually thought we were going to be working with kids who get free lunch because they need this the most. And the very first time I sent those waivers home, I got zero back because kids don't want everybody knowing they're on free lunch,” Cota-Robles said. “And the next week we were like, ‘Okay, boom. No prerequisites whatsoever.’ Any kid is allowed to sign up in sixth, seventh or eighth grade.”
Currently, the project reaches students in five Tucson schools as well as the nonprofit Youth on Their Own. By next January, Cota-Robles and his team are aiming to deliver 1,000 meal kits each week. And in the next seven years, 17,000.
“This is so much bigger than food and it's so much bigger than calories. We're seeing dynamics change in family households. We're seeing families enjoy dinner together. One of the biggest things we hear from parents is that it's creating bonding time that they've never had with their kids before. We also hear that we're teaching a lot of the parents these skills which emphasizes that this is a generation-wide loss of this basic cooking skills that once kept families together and nourished,” he said.
Plus, there’s sometimes sugar involved.
“The kids love the sweets. They love, you know, doing chocolate chip cookies, brownies, of course. Pancakes are another big favorite,” he said.
With a little more experience reaching families in Tucson, Cota-Robles says the project will be ready for take off across the country. And he’s already come a long way.
“Back in the day, it was like, ‘What friend is going to let me crash their kitchen and film a recipe video there?’ he said.
Today, the Tucson Family Food Project occupies two closed Tucson schools. As he expands, Cota-Robles wants to take on even more unoccupied school sites as filming sets, food prep sites and regenerative farms.
Cota-Robles even plans to extend his digital reach.
“We’re actually in the process of expanding the YouTube channel. So instead of just being the recipes for the kids, we are going to start a podcast segment called ‘It’s Good to be Curious’ and we’re going to start interviewing local experts, nonprofit leaders to branch out what we’re doing to help the whole family,” Cota-Robles said.
The Tucson Family Food Project is partnering with the University of Arizona to collect quantitative and qualitative data on students so it can formally demonstrate the efficacy of the program.
John DeSoto contributed to this story.
VIDEO: The Tucson Family Food Project
