Wyoming’s Cent$ible Nutrition Program lost the majority of its budget last fall, when the Trump administration eliminated funding for the education arm of the federal Supplemental Nutrition Association Program (SNAP).
Despite the loss of SNAP-Ed, Cent$ible Nutrition is still finding creative ways to help low-income Wyomingites learn more about budgeting, cooking and healthy lifestyle choices. That’s included taking a more regional approach and exploring online classes.
The Cent$ible Nutrition Program is part of the University of Wyoming Extension, and ran SNAP-Ed before that funding got cut. The Wyoming-based program taught nutrition education classes to nearly 900 adults and more than 2,000 kids around the state in 2024.
Now, Cent$ible Nutrition is having to adapt to a much more shoestring budget. The program previously had point-people in every county in the state, running in-person workshops and serving as on-the-ground resources to answer community questions.
“ We had over 20 educators out in the field,” said Cent$ible Nutrition director Mindy Meuli. “Now we've reduced [that] down to seven.”
Making those cuts was hard, Meuli said, especially because the people working in those roles had an up-close-and-personal understanding of how the change would impact those with limited resources.
“ We have awesome educators and they were doing extraordinary jobs and really doing well with getting connected in their communities,” she said. “Having to let people go was really difficult.”
SNAP-Ed funding made up about 90% of Cent$ible Nutrition’s budget, with the remainder coming from the Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP). While Cent$ible has been able to use some carryover money from SNAP-Ed, that runs out this fall, leaving EFNEP as its only source of funding.
“We’re in transition,” said Meuli, “It's kind of a temporary solution, because that [EFNEP] funding is much less and we won't be able to sustain seven educators.”
In the meantime, those seven educators are now focusing on higher-need counties while also testing the feasibility of covering a larger area.
“ We do a lot of teaching in the schools and I know that educators are trying to reach out and continue the programming in as many schools as we were before,” said Meuli. “They’re trying to reconnect and reintroduce themselves [and] meet with some of the local agencies and organizations that we've traditionally worked with.”
Juggling more locations involves strategic scheduling so that school and adult programs coincide. But that doesn’t make up for the loss of funding, people and capacity.
“ We're not going to hit all the communities as many times a year as we did,” said Meuli.
Once the program is exclusively funded by EFNEP, its focus will also be more specifically focused on direct education to adults and young people. Meuli said SNAP-Ed funding had a slightly broader umbrella.
“SNAP-Ed was a little more community focused and trying to encourage community interventions to help increase access to healthy, nutritious foods and physical activities in the communities and really helping outreach to people with limited resources to include them in being able to access those things,” she said.
Partnerships and online classes
Cent$ible Nutrition’s programming has had measurable impacts on young people and adults in the state, increasing the amount of fruits and vegetables on students’ plates and upping physical activity, according to its 2024 report.
Ironically, said Meuli, the loss of SNAP-Ed funding has coincided with more and more organizations wanting to work together.
“Unfortunately I'm like, ‘Have you heard? We are down in capacity and we're not able to provide the reach that we did before,’” she said. “It really felt like there was a big collaboration and community around addressing food insecurity in Wyoming. I felt like we had a lot of traction and momentum to really dig in and address the issue. I think some of that momentum is gonna be lost with this loss of funding.”
The program is still referring people to the Department of Family Services, Medicaid and different UW Extension offices, and partnering with the Wyoming Department of Education and First Lady Jennie Gordon’s Wyoming Hunger Initiative.
But it has had to shift its involvement in more community-focused food access efforts.
“ We're still playing a key role in connecting hunger relief organizations to produce donations, trying to help connect who needs the produce or who can use it or who can get it distributed and helping play a role,” said Meuli. “But because we're not in every county, it's just more of a connector role.”
Cent$ible Nutrition is still partnering with the Food Bank of Wyoming to share recipes and nutrition information in food boxes, and hold cooking demonstrations.
Getting connected with people online has also been a bigger focus in this new era, although that comes with its own set of challenges.
“ Internet access can be a challenge in several locations and particularly for people with limited resources, they don’t always have that,” said Meuli. “ We have been trying to connect with the networks that help access technology for rural Wyoming.”
Not having hands-on instruction for a cooking class can also be a challenge in a digital classroom. But Meuli said more people are getting used to connecting on Zoom and building relationships online, although that has its limits.
“ It's just not quite the same. You don't have quite that same connection or that personal relationship,” she said. “But we are trying to continue our social media presence. We have a website and newsletter, and so we are really trying to continue those things to maintain our reach.”
