Jenna Adams ’23 decided to enter the Miss Martinsville-Henry County Pageant this year because of a peanut butter sandwich.
Spoiler alert: She actually won the pageant and will be vying for the Miss Virginia title in June.
Now back to that peanut butter sandwich.
A 2-year-old boy was eyeing it enviously one day at lunchtime when he sat down next to Adams at Little Angels, the early learning center she owns and where she’s a teacher.
This little boy had some serious behavior issues. “I would go home with scratches and bites and bruises,” said Adams. Still she cared about him, and she couldn’t say no when he asked for half of the sandwich she had brought for lunch that day.
“He ate it in two bites, so, of course, I gave him the other half, too,” said Adams. “He went down for his nap, and, when he woke up, he was an angel for the rest of the afternoon.”
What made the difference? That peanut butter sandwich. No longer hungry, the boy’s true nature could shine through.
At public school, children get free breakfast, free lunch, free snacks. Why can’t we help children when they’re 2 and starving all day long? Parents are struggling, and we are struggling to help the parents.
Jenna Adams ’23 Tweet This
The experience opened Adams’ eyes to the hunger and poor nutrition many young children in her home community—and right at Little Angels—were experiencing every day and how it was impacting their lives. At one point she even received a note in an empty lunchbox from a parent asking if she could feed their child that day.
Adams opened Little Angels when she was a full-time student in Longwood’s early childhood education program at Martinsville, so she is no stranger to running a child-care center. From one staff member (herself) and 10 children, Little Angels has grown to five employees and 35 children in just a few years.
But finding a way to provide good nutrition and keep her students from going hungry was a bigger challenge. Adams discovered that centers like hers—private businesses that primarily serve children too young for public school—do not have access to free state and federal food programs that schools do. Some of the resources that are available require an upfront outlay of cash by the center with no guarantee of full reimbursement—often an insurmountable challenge for a small business.
“At public school, children get free breakfast, free lunch, free snacks. Why can’t we help children when they’re 2 and starving all day long?” she wondered. “Parents are struggling, and we are struggling to help the parents.”
Looking for a solution, she and some of her friends who were active in pageants and looking for community service hours started a food pantry at Little Angels called Tiny Tummies. But it became clear to Adams that the problem was much bigger than Little Angels and her food pantry.
And that’s where the Miss Martinsville-Henry County Pageant came in. An active pageant contestant as a teenager, Adams had left that world behind when she started college and her child-care center. Now something completely different was drawing her back in.
“I knew that I had to bring awareness to this issue. I had something I needed to talk about,” she said. She thought the pageant and—if she won—the platform she would have as Miss Martinsville-Henry County would give her the perfect opportunity to speak out about child hunger to a wider audience.
It started with the pageant’s interview component.
“This girl has something to say,” Adams recalled telling the judges. “My kids are going home hungry every single day. And there’s no fix.”
At the end of her interview, four of the six judges, some of them men, were “absolutely sobbing,” she said.
I told my mom, ‘I’m going to do whatever it takes to get this issue recognized.’ It has already brought so much awareness in Martinsville and Henry County. Imagine what it could do on a statewide basis.
Jenna Adams ’23 Tweet This
Adams will compete in the Miss Virginia pageant in June, hoping for an even higher-profile platform for spreading the word about child hunger.
“I told my mom, ‘I’m going to do whatever it takes to get this issue recognized.’ It has already brought so much awareness in Martinsville and Henry County. Imagine what it could do on a statewide basis.”
Actually, she’s already getting some state-level attention. At a gathering of local politicians, Adams explained her theory of reforming the Child and Adult Care Food Program of 1968 to Virginia Del. Eric Phillips and Virginia Sen. Bill Stanley. Phillips encouraged her to contact his office for advice about how to get a bill written for review. “I’m working on a rough draft now and should have it ready to submit to his office soon,” she said.
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