Nourishing Whidbey Island
- 1 day ago
- 3 min read
In 2007, while attending a Power of Hope program on the island, a South Whidbey resident named Mary Fisher learned that there were over sixty known homeless teens living on the south end of Whidbey. That's the founding moment WIN itself names in its own history.
For a place where everyone knows everyone, where the schools are small enough that the teachers know their students' siblings and parents, that number had to mean something different from what it would mean somewhere else. It meant we knew about them. It meant they were here.
Mary started Whidbey Island Nourishes that same year.
What it actually is
Whidbey Island Nourishes — most people on the island just call it WIN — is a volunteer-powered nonprofit dedicated to nourishing youth on South Whidbey, as the organization describes itself.
It started focused on unhoused teens, the kids whose numbers Mary first heard about in 2007. Over the years, the work has grown. Today, according to WIN's own account, its programs reach children "from the age they can eat solid food through age 18." The mission has expanded; the focus has not. This is a youth program. It always has been.
Two programs, both quiet, both essential
WIN runs two main food programs.
The Weekend Meal Program sends nourishing food home with children and teens during the times when the school cafeteria isn't there to fall back on — weekends, holidays, school breaks. WIN frames the goal plainly on its own site: reaching kids "during times when access to food can be challenging." The point is exactly what it sounds like — that no child should arrive at Monday morning hungry because Friday afternoon was the last meal they could count on.
The Snack Programs run through partnerships WIN itself names: the South Whidbey School District, the South Whidbey School Farms Program, and AmeriCorps. Every weekday, every pre-K through fifth-grade student at South Whidbey Elementary receives a fresh, whole-food snack — fruits, vegetables, eggs, yogurt, whole grains. WIN's program description specifies no sugar. Much of the food is grown on the school farm itself, a program that Cary Peterson established on the school district's South Campus in 2014.
The same kids who help grow the food are the kids who eat it.
There are no application forms, no qualifying questions, no quiet conversations with a child about whether their family deserves help. Every student gets a snack because every student is at school. That's the design.
The infrastructure behind it
WIN doesn't operate alone. According to its own history, in 1999 Nancy Nordhoff and Linda Moore founded Goosefoot, the South Whidbey community foundation. In 2017, Goosefoot restructured as a Type 1 Supporting Organization and invited three nonprofits to join as Supported Organizations: Whidbey Watershed Stewards, Whidbey at Home, and WIN.
That's the same Nancy Nordhoff whose legacy ThrivingFest is honoring on Saturday afternoon.
The arc is worth pausing on. A woman who has spent decades putting structures in place to take care of this island co-founded the foundation that today supports the program that feeds South Whidbey's kids. Nothing about any of that was inevitable. It happened because someone planted it, and other people kept watering it.
At ThrivingFest
WIN is featured in the Friday afternoon session at WICA — Nourishing Our Community. The film sits alongside films about the Organic Farm School, the Soup's On program at Island Church of Whidbey, and Good Cheer Food Pantry. Each organization will speak briefly about how its work has grown since filming.
The panel afterward asks the question pulled from the program: what does the future of farming and access to healthy food look like on Whidbey?
For WIN, the answer keeps coming back to the same question Mary Fisher heard at that Power of Hope program in 2007 — only with more layers now. How do we make sure no child on South Whidbey arrives Monday morning hungry? How do we keep the school farm growing? How do we connect what's being grown to who's eating it? How do we keep showing up?
The films are the prompt. The room — and the people in it, year after year, watering the work — is the point.
August 13–15, 2026 · Langley · Free, by donation · Drop in for one session or stay all three days
