Building Healthy Communities Through WIC

Planned Parenthood’s Women, Infant and Children (WIC) program impacts the lives of thousands of Orange County residents each year. We’ve been steadily building on our successes and helping more and more families each year! This past year, WIC served over 20,000 women and children – a 7.9% increase from the year before. Through two central locations and eight satellite locations in Orange County as well as innovative programming, WIC works to ensure pregnant women, new mothers and young children eat well and stay healthy. For some quick, nutritious and delicious recipes, click here.

Breast Feeding Awareness Walk

WIC held its first Breastfeeding Walk in August 2007 in support of Breastfeeding Awareness Month. We were joined by several WIC clients and dozens of community members including Senator Lou Correa as we walked down Beach Blvd. in Stanton.
The event helped raise awareness for the importance of breastfeeding as the first step to a healthy life and reminded Orange County residents that not only is WIC part of a healthy community, we are committed to making it better!

Mommy & Me

Our Stanton WIC program worked in partnership with the MOMS Program to offer Mommy and Me classes for our clients. In our class for infants, ages 6 to 11 months, mothers and babies bonded through special activities planned to enrich and make their moments together memorable. The classes incorporated fun, interactive and educational games that stimulate young minds. For infants, ages 12 to 24 months, the classes offered a variety of entertaining and instructive activities. At this stage we focused on learning new words, sounds, movements and concepts through music and dancing.

In collaboration with MOMS, we also provided pregnancy classes in Spanish. Topics included the baby’s development, nutrition during pregnancy, managing morning sickness, symptoms of premature delivery, childbirth, and care during the postpartum period, family planning and breastfeeding.

If you are interested in signing up for any of these sessions, or if you want to participate in our WIC Program, please call our Stanton office at 714-894-1271.

Go Bananas for Books!

The “Go Bananas for Books” literacy program, launched in April 2007, has helped hundreds of children in our community become more engaged with reading. The grant to fund the program was set up to foster a child’s insatiable curiosity for learning—all through the wonderful world of books.

Since the launch, more than 10,000 books have been given to families to read at home. The program also focused on eating healthy and being physically active.
Stanton Community Library employees trained volunteers the skills needed to keep the children engaged while reading. The volunteers then played an important part of the program by donating eight hours a week to read to children waiting for their appointments at the Stanton WIC. The volunteers also participated in fun art activities with the kids! If you would like to donate a new book for our program, please click here.