Our Story
Every child deserves to be nourished. That belief is at the heart of why SPOON exists.
SPOON was founded in Portland, Oregon in 2007 by Cindy Kaplan and Mishelle Rudzinski. Their path to founding SPOON began when each adopted a child from Kazakhstan and encountered the same troubling reality: both children were experiencing severe malnutrition that was entirely preventable. As they searched for answers, Cindy and Mishelle discovered that the caregivers in Kazakhstan were not failing children out of indifference. They were doing their best without the training and resources they needed to succeed.
Children were malnourished not because the caregivers had failed, but because the system was not set up to meet the complex needs of the children. Caregivers were ready and willing to nourish the children in their care. They simply had not been equipped to do so. And no one was addressing that gap.
SPOON's early work focused on nutrition education and menu adjustments to improve the diets for children living outside of family care. But it was caregivers themselves who showed us where to look next. In one moment that has stayed with us, a caregiver laid a child horizontally across her lap and squirted thin liquid into his mouth. He coughed and choked. The caregiver was not being careless. She had never been shown another way. The same scene played out again and again–in Kazakhstan and in country after country–wherever children have feeding difficulties and caregivers have not been trained to help them.
That is when we understood that what children are fed is only part of the story. How children are fed matters just as much. Feeding children with disabilities and those living outside of families requires specific skills, specific knowledge, and consistent support. And, children need the care of a family to truly grow and thrive. Without that, even the most dedicated caregiver cannot fully succeed.
We took that model to scale in Kazakhstan by doing something that would define how SPOON works to this day: we did not arrive with a solution. We arrived with a question, and we asked it alongside the people who had the most at stake. From the beginning, we partnered with the Ministry of Health and the Kazakh Academy of Nutrition. Our partners led the project and collected the data. SPOON consulted on the design and analyzed the findings. Because the effort was shared, the change was sustainable. Kazakhstan changed national policy on the way children in institutions are fed, and it held, because the people responsible for implementing it had built it themselves. That partnership model is now the backbone of every SPOON program.
What started in the institutions of Kazakhstan grew into programs in more than twenty-five countries set in residential care facilities, preschools, and rehab clinics before graduating to entire national health systems. We work to make sure that disability-inclusive nutrition services support children to live in their communities, not in institutions. We have expanded to work alongside health workers, early childhood educators, and community leaders. These are the partners who directly reach children, change feeding practices, and drive policy reform. SPOON's role is to equip them with the knowledge and tools to do so.