On a warm September day in the courtyard of a San Francisco senior living community, a dozen residents shake their hips and throw their hands in the air to the beat of, fittingly, Earth, Wind & Fire’s “September.”
Their hour-long dance class is hosted by Leah’s Pantry, a nonprofit that has run nutrition and health programs around the city since 2006. For Kengsoi Chou Lei, a 72-year-old retiree who came to the U.S. from Macau in 1995, attending the weekly class has taught her that “exercise makes you healthier, more relaxed and happier overall,” she said in Cantonese through an interpreter.
The organization’s class schedule will soon shrink as Leah’s Pantry faces a 90% funding loss from federal cuts passed in July as part of President Donald Trump’s tax-cut and spending bill.
Schools, food banks and other organizations are rushing to wind down nutrition and health programming once funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program Education, known as SNAP-Ed, according to eight state officials and nonprofit organizations interviewed by Reuters.