Be a Mom on a Mission to Help Chef Solus fight childhood obesity and improve childhood nutrition!

I am a nurse and a mom who founded a free, bilingual nutrition education website to promote healthy eating to children through fun interactive nutrition games.  I am in a national contest “Apps for Healthy Kids” (part of the Michelle Obama “Let’s Move” campaign to fight childhood obesity).  This contest gives me an opportunity to really reach those families that don’t know we are here to help them.

I am looking for a limited number mom bloggers to partner with me in the fight against childhood obesity and improve children’s nutrition.  We only have a few days left in this national contest (contest ends August 14^th 12 pm EST, 9am PST ) and we need your help to mobilize moms and supporters to vote. Here is how we can help you by helping us win this contest:

• You can show your potential advertisers and clients that you helped our website win a national contest.  This will show how powerful your blog or other social channels are as a marketing vehicle.  You will also get an exclusive badge to show your success if we win!
• You can share your banner 150×150 or 200×200 for mom owned business, marketing, family friendly products or services to our website visitors and parent members. (If we win the contest all the more traffic to the page)

• ie. For participating, we will post your content for one full year as a “thank you” for your support on a special ‘Hall of Fame of moms who sent Chef Solus to DC” on a resource page for parents.  If we do not win, we will still post your image, link and text for three months on a parents’ page on our website.

• We will also give you a special badge to post on your site promoting your marketing muscle!  “I helped Chef Solus win the Apps for Healthy Kids Contest!”

• You will be aligning yourself with an event that will have national exposure

• You will be working for a great cause, our children.  In the end, that is what this is all about.

All you have to do is help us spread the word about the contest and let your readers and friends know how to vote for our game on your website, blog, facebook, twitter and any other social system you use.

To participate just:

• Email me at support (at) nourishinteractive.com or Respond to this blog in the comments section, make sure to give email so we can contact you today. (Make sure to add: support (at) nourishinteractive.com to your address book/white list to receive our email.)

• We will provide you with a special image badge to put on your site (sample shown above) to show you are Mom on a Mission to send Chef Solus to DC

• Post short article (you can see it at bottom of this post) for you to post on your networks (twitter, facebook, blog, e-news, or other social network)

• Send us a link of the posted article on your blog, facebook, twitter, e-newsletter or other social channels and encourage moms and supporters to vote throughout your network.
• *In addition you can also ask fans, friends, family to vote by sending them an email recommending they vote!
  Direct link to vote is: http://www.appsforhealthykids.com/application-gallery/chef-solus-and-the-food-pyramid-adventure or Share link to our website contest page http://www.nourishinteractive.com/healthy-kids-games-contest which gives some reasons why they may want to vote for us!

• After the contest, we will place your banner 150×150 or 200×200 with link to your site on our special resource page for parents called our Chef Solus’ Hall of Fame Wall, along with a two-line description of your website or blog.

• We will post an image and link for each of the social media you use to promote our game.

• Please note that you must be a family friendly site, we will notify you immediately if your site is not appropriate for our visitors.
• Only selected approved moms will be involved in Moms on Mission to send Chef Solus to DC.
• This offer ends when we have reached capacity for our ‘Hall of Fame Wall’ – we will announce when it is closed here.

There is only a few days left of the contest- Do you want to help mobilize moms and supporters to take quick action to vote for Chef Solus (and support a woman/mom owned business) in this national contest? The leading finalists at this time are all men! We need your help moms- we know we can do it with your help! If you are interested and feel to you can support this mission, please comment below to get approval started*

* Remember we will screen all sites/blogs and products to make sure they are appropriate for our family friendly, safe-surf website, please wait to hear from us before working on this.

Once you hear from us and we send you the badge and it will be time to get moving to send Chef Solus to DC, so he can reach more children and families with his free nutrition games, fun interactive tools and positive healthy messaging. Thank you  for your support!

All of our games are free and available in English and Spanish- see them here http://bit.ly/chefsolusgames
Learn more about animated ‘Chef Solus and the Food Pyramid Adventure Game’ and check out all 20 of our free FUN games and learning tools.  Click here to play Chef Solus Food Pyramid Game- first 2 levels require no sign up, or sign up to play all 7 levels and get progress reports. It’s FUN and FREE!

“Together we can give children the knowledge, facts and skills to develop healthy habits for a lifetime!” Maggie LaBarbera RN

About NourishInteractive.com

We are a family oriented free bilingual website that teaches children and families about nutrition through fun interactive nutrition games, tools and content. My website is run by health care professionals.  We have been listed by the USDA as one of the top websites to fight childhood obesity and just received the American Library award for Best Kids Websites.  We have grown to almost a half a million page views per month through word of mouth. Website haas Google PR of 5, Average 5 min and 5-6 page views per visitor these number goes up during school year!

Here is mini article to post on your blog/site:

Maggie LaBarbera is a nurse and a mother who started, NourishInteractive.com, a free bilingual nutrition website for kids.  She launched this website in 2008 because of her concern about the growing problem of childhood obesity.  Childhood obesity is at the forefront of the national news with 60% of our children overweight or obese.   The website provides parents, educators and children with interactive games and nutrition tools that make learning about healthy eating fun.

Michelle Obama also believes that we need creative and fun solutions that will engage children and help them form healthy habits.  That is why she held a national contest “Apps for healthy Kids” part of the “Let’s Move” national campaign.

NourishInteractive.com has entered the “Chef Solus Food Pyramid Adventure” game in the Michelle Obama contest.  She needs your support to win.  A vote for her game is a vote for helping prevent childhood obesity.

It will only take you a few minutes of your time so please support this important cause.  Our children are counting on you!  You can vote for the Nourish Interactive game by clicking here.  Please vote before noon August 14^th.

It is a very exciting day for our team at nourishinteractive.com.  We were notified by the Parents Choice

Nourish Interactive Award

Organization that our website has received an award .  We really take this award with great pride and appreciation.  We are a team of health care providers and we have a vision of being instrumental in the creation of a new health-minded generation.

When I first had this idea, it was because my sister’s daughter was officially deemed obese by her pediatrician.  Distraught, my sister called me,  looking for some easy, quick nurtion tips that she could use and for some fun way for her daughter to learn the importance of healthy meals, a balanced diet.  We couldn’t find a site that had the information in small, succinct, easy to understand format for parents, and more importantly, we needed kid friendly material.  And that is how nourishinteractive.com was born.

We believe strongly in small changes add up to a healthier child.  We also believe that nutrition has gotten a bad rap and its been a battle to fight “fun” with “fun” against the junk food marketers and their big budgets.

But you have been passing our site along, teacher to teacher, parent to parent; and it is through this grassroots efforts that we have grown to over 160,000 hits a month and continuing to grow.

Please know that we are always looking to improve the web site and add more information.  We have an exciting healthy recipes substitution feature about to launch!

So don’t hesitate to share your ideas and your requests.

Read the full press release

Nourish Interactive’s official award page.

About Parents Choice Nonprofit Organization

The Foundation’s purpose is to search out and recommend products that help kids grow – imaginatvely, physically, morally and mentally—fairly priced products that are fun, safe and socially sound.  Parents’ Choice approaches its mission with a deep passion and a remarkable clarity of purpose. Our experts and advisors, join us in the hard work and determination required to navigate the vast array of children’s media and toys available in today’s marketplace. With the generosity of time and spirit, parents, grandparents, librarians, educators, writers, artists, musicians, performing artists, and yes, children from across the country participate in the process.i

We participated in the Visa Health and Wellness Fair yesterday. I had a lot of fun talking with employees, who are also parents, about our tools and tips to help them bring nutrition to the home.

I was touched by many moms and even some dads! – who shared with me their stories about their children who are overweight. They did not want to make their kids feel embarrassed by pointing out their weight issue and weren’t sure what they could do to help. I also met moms who had kids that were of normal weight but refused to eat vegetables or drink milk. Bottom line, were not eating a balanced meal from all the food groups so they were missing some important nutrients.

I think the key messages that I heard myself say over and over again:

• Don’t try to change all your child’s habit in one fail swoop. Focus on one healthy change at a time
• Set goals and work with your child to keep track. Put a tracking sheet on the fridge or the family bulletin board
• Don’t single out your child. The family should work together to have healthy eating habits
• Keep it simple. And most importantly, keep it fun. If you start to nag and get mad, the child will associate nutrition with negative experiences. We want to create the opposite effect.
• Be patient. Habits take some time to break and new habits take some time to make.
• Celebrate little successes
• But all changes will add up to a healthier child!

I know it is a repeated message but when I talk with parents and hear their stories, I feel the importance of this message and I am reminded why I have started this website.

Resources for parents:

Kid friendly goals and tracking sheets

Parent Healthy Tips

Nutrition Topics

Nutrition Tools

Kids’ nutrition learning games