Childhood Hunger
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Healthy Foods: Invest in Food, Invest in Kids
Summary:
The Program Coordinator of Island Grown Schools, writes about the efforts to improve school meals in Martha’s Vineyard.
January 30
Healthy Foods: Invest in Food, Invest in Kids
Publication: The Huffington Post
We started with community outreach and education about the possibilities, practicalities, and importance of bringing healthy food to our kids. School gardens, taste testings, community local food suppers, farm field trips, and in-class learning about food, agriculture, and nutrition have helped build enthusiasm among the children towards eating healthy food, and showed parents the spectrum of fresh, healthy, locally grown foods their kids would actually eat. Next, we reached out to plumbers, electricians and builders, who volunteered their skills to expand one school’s kitchen facility to make meals from scratch on-site, rather than having them trucked up daily from the central corporate kitchen. Architects donated their time to draw up plans that would make the new kitchen as functional and inexpensive to build as possible. Owners of restaurants and commercial kitchens offered to donate kitchen equipment. Together, this community good will brought the estimated cost of the kitchen renovation from $500,000 to $81,000.
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