FoodCorps: Tell me about how you came to FoodCorps.

Ailish Dennigan: I majored in Public Health in college and was taking a class on place and health, which had a focus on health equity. I wrote a paper on built environments and their connection to health, and one piece of it was school gardens. FoodCorps came up in my Google search for that, and I ended up volunteering with some service members in North Carolina. I applied to be a service member and didn’t get it, so I farmed for a season in Montana, then moved to Connecticut to work at a local health food store. I grew up in Connecticut and Massachusetts, and was born in Norwalk, which is where I served, so it kind of came full circle. I was familiar with the area from living there for a year, and the second time I applied I ended up at my FoodCorps service site, Norwalk Grows! I think FoodCorps has combined a lot of interests that I had in working with food and learning different levels of the food system. I catered in college and had some gardening experience and some farming experience, and FoodCorps combined that and added the element of food justice for me, which I hadn’t really touched upon in those other jobs.

FoodCorps: What are some of the challenges in food justice that Norwalk faces?

Ailish: There’s a big income gap in Connecticut, with a lot of wealth in sections of the coastline, which is what people may automatically think of when they think of Connecticut. But the opposite is true, too. There are gaps in wealth in the area, which creates a particular dynamic when it comes to perception versus reality of food access and food justice issues here.

One kindergarten teacher said she didn’t realize how many kids weren’t eating breakfast at home.

FoodCorps: What are some of the strengths of that area?

Ailish: I think a lot of people who live in Norwalk value its diversity. It’s a really well-resourced area and it’s very culturally and economically diverse. And what I’ve gotten, at least from a health perspective, is that there are so many different types of professionals—in the schools, hospitals, local non-profits, businesses, farms and museums—really working toward improving the health of children. In general, everyone’s working towards collectively improving the health of kids in Norwalk.

FoodCorps: So tell me a little bit about the Share Our Strength Breakfast After the Bell pilot project and how you came to be connected to it.

Ailish: It was a grant opportunity through Share Our Strength’s No Kid Hungry campaign which is their initiative that focuses on childhood hunger. My supervisor at Norwalk Grows, Lisa, found the grant opportunity through FoodCorps. She put it on the table and we presented it to the principal at Brookside Elementary and to Food Services. I actually didn’t realize this at the time, but Food Services had emailed all of the principals, looking for interest in a Breakfast After the Bell program, and they hadn’t gotten any responses. Having that relationship with the principal was kind of an essential link—it was an aligned goal. So we wrote the proposal with input from various stakeholders at the school, and we got it!

FoodCorps: Walk me through what the project looks like.

Ailish: Prior to the pilot, we had a traditional breakfast model where kids could come before school and eat breakfast in the cafeteria, and there were about 50 kids doing that every morning. Then during the pilot, we had an average of 118 kids participate, so it was almost two and a half times increase in participation. Kids could grab their breakfast from the grab n’ go cart and then eat in the classroom, so it lengthened the amount of time that kids had the opportunity to eat, instead of rushing straight to class.

One kindergarten teacher said she didn’t realize how many kids weren’t eating breakfast at home. The most academically-heavy part of class, like when kids learn to read, happened in the morning; so if they hadn’t eaten since dinner the night before, and they weren’t going to eat until lunch, they weren’t fueled nutritionally for the most academic portion of their day.

In the short-term, the collaboration gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people—or just build and deepen—relationships. But I think collaboration was really important also for the sustainability of the program.

FoodCorps: Who did you collaborate with on this project? And why do you think collaboration was important in the construction and implementation of the project?

Ailish: Yeah, I think collaboration piece was the most exciting part for me as a service member because it was supported by this community that I’d been building throughout the year. There is a lot of buy-in from the principal, Sandra, who was the main communicator with the school community, and she left time in staff meetings to let teachers know that the breakfast program was happening in their classrooms. I think she pitched it effectively, and if it was just kind of like thrown at teachers, I don’t know if they would’ve been so patient or flexible during the pilot

The vice-principal and the librarian coordinated administering a pre-survey, and the food service staff offered their expertise, training the people running the cart and transporting the meals. Norwalk Grows—my host organization—was also a big collaborator and supporter in making the survey and helping to structure the morning schedule.

And the students were a part of the process—we had a fifth grade Breakfast Brigade, where the students would go around and collect the trash. It was a privilege for them to have a responsibility and to leave class. In addition to wanting to include the students, this was in response to a concern that teachers’ had about mess in their classrooms, so the trash wouldn’t sit there all day, and it didn’t make too much extra work for our custodial staff.

Hector the Custodian was great! He was always there and giving feedback on supplies and sustainability of supplies. He didn’t want to keep asking me for trash bags every time we ran out in the future. At Central Office, Karen was someone who I hadn’t met yet, and she did all the purchasing, that was a huge task that was thrown at her.

In the short-term, the collaboration gave me the opportunity to meet a lot of people—or just build and deepen—relationships. But I think collaboration was really important also for the sustainability of the program. Even though I’m leaving, it’s continuing and expanding for this year, which wouldn’t have happened if there weren’t so many people with buy-in involved with the project.

FoodCorps has definitely given me a lens of having more patience and understanding for where people are coming from. Everyone has their own story and priorities and being a FoodCorps service member gave me the liberty to explore those stories with different collaborators. I think in terms of the actual project, I was able to offer support as a FoodCorps service member as a connector between people with differing priorities that maybe wouldn’t have been available otherwise.

The district was very receptive to the model, and they recently secured a large grant that will help to expand the model to the entire district within the school year.

FoodCorps: So what are some of the changes that you observed as part of this pilot?

Ailish: Well, the overall increase in participation was a big one, and creating more of a breakfast culture at the school. Whether or not a student was getting breakfast, they would see the breakfast cart right when walking in as a parent or a student, and there are extra people greeting them as they start their day. We also had the food service staff greeting all the children—not just the ones getting breakfast—they’re not tucked away in the cafeteria. The district was very receptive to the model, and they recently secured a large grant that will help to expand the model to the entire district within the school year. Being a part of the instigating team was a really rewarding piece of my service, and I’m proud of the district for taking on such an impressive expansion!

The post To Get Kids Eating Breakfast, Follow This Strategy appeared first on FoodCorps.

American children are hungry. To be exact: 13.1 million children under the age of 18. In a country famous for its excesses — big cars, big homes, big burgers — our children are not getting enough to eat. On Native American reservations, like the Hopi reservation where I live and serve as a FoodCorps service member, rates of food insecurity and child hunger are up to two times higher than the rest of the country. On the 2,500-square-mile Hopi reservation, there are only a handful of stores that stock fresh fruits and vegetables, and transportation and storage costs drive up their prices. Combined with the increased cost of produce and other healthy foods, widespread economic depression makes eating healthy an often-unrealistic goal compared to cheap, low-nutrient “junk” foods. Low-nutrient diets manifest in the skyrocketing rates of diet-related illnesses such as obesity, heart disease, and diabetes – all of which are increasingly being linked to hunger. Nutrition education programs aimed at addressing the epidemic of diet-related illness, child hunger, and food insecurity on the reservation are failing to provide results. Here’s why:

The desolate food landscape and visibility of child hunger on Native American reservations are neither coincidence nor pure genetics. Rather, they are reverberations of years of violent colonization and oppression. One need not look further than the legacy of Native American boarding schools to get a swift introduction to the types of injustices that took and continue to take place. Today, much of that explicit violence has shifted to implicit violence, such as the subtle erasure of culture from curriculum. The subject of nutrition is no exception. Reservation cafeterias are subject to a variety of restrictions, from food group requirements to calorie and fat gram limitations. In theory, these guidelines ensure that children receive and learn about proper nutrition, thereby providing them with a ladder with which to climb out of hunger. However, on the Hopi reservation, many of the given standards are incompatible with a traditional diet, and unrealistic considering limited finances. To those living here, it is obvious that those regulations were not created with Hopi children in mind, and therefore aren’t teaching Hopi children the full significance and meaning of food.

As a non-Hopi, the significance of Hopi food is not my story to tell. However, I have noticed an obvious, inherent understanding that food is not singular, that it can’t be broken down solely into calories and groups and grams. On Hopi, conversations on food are not separate from conversations on cultural identity and sovereignty. As my Hopi supervisor puts it, “Food plays a large part in identifying who we are. Growing in this high desert climate…that’s what we’re known for. That’s how we’ve survived and will survive.”

This acknowledgement of food as non-singular points out a critical error in the teaching of nutrition in schools. If nutrition education in schools is to truly help dig our nation’s children out of hunger, it must focus less on the deductive(breaking food down into calories, fat grams, food groups) and more on the constructive (food as intersectional, as identity, culture, and life). The ladder that is given to children with deductive nutrition education is not nearly tall enough to mount the wall of colonialism, economic depression, and geographic isolation enmeshed in reservation food systems. We must help to break that wall down while still providing the leverage to climb it.

So, then, what does constructive nutrition look like? First: it’s messy. Constructive nutrition acknowledges the complexity of food, and dares to allow children to explore meanings of food beyond quantitative measurements. It teaches contextualized science, empowered science. It gives students knowledge of not only what is scientific fact, but the story of how those facts came to be, and why they are valued. Constructive nutrition recognizes that hunger, poverty, and illness are inseparable, and collaborates with unexpected partners to address not one but all three factors. Constructive nutrition works to build not only healthy bodies, but also healthy food systems and healthy communities.

Secondly, constructive nutrition is place-specific. It acknowledges the union of food, people, and cultural history. It breaks down the oppressive history of white-generated nutrition standards by allowing for the creation of alternative nutrition narratives. Constructive nutrition builds up culturally significant foods rather than reducing them down to quantitative data. Constructive nutrition is in the hands of the people.

Lastly, constructive nutrition is constantly questioning, re-evaluating, and asking itself how it can do better. Much of the above description of constructive nutrition is easier said than done. However, this should not and cannot be a deterrent to working towards it. In Moenkopi, Arizona, where I serve along with one other, we strive towards just, constructive nutrition by using the FoodCorps framework while finding ways to make it relevant to Hopi children. We acknowledge our limits, specifically my limits as anon-Hopi, and FoodCorps’ limits as a non-Hopi organization, and constantly reevaluate the work that we do.

As a national organization, FoodCorps is listening. They have offered native-led workshops at trainings, and are planning on incorporating more native community-specific workshops at future trainings. With a focus on growing and cooking healthy food, FoodCorps’ suggested curriculum is already more constructive, less deductive, than most. This is promising for their capacity to affect lasting change against food injustice and child hunger; other nutrition- and food-focused programs should follow suit. However, it is not enough. FoodCorps and other programs that want to truly participate in teaching constructive nutrition, in affecting lasting change in food systems, must constantly strive to be better, more inclusive, and more diverse. They must strive not only to serve native communities, but also to allow those communities to construct the programming of the future.

American children are hungry. Native American children are hungrier. The deductive nutrition education of old has failed them. Food is complex, immensely complex, and our solutions to food-related problems must match that complexity. Constructive nutrition education — nutrition education that acknowledges the complexity of food, defines itself as place-specific, and constantly self-evaluates – is lurking just beyond, or perhaps within the current framework. It is the solution that we desperately need. Are we willing enough to take it on?

FoodCorps Service Member Lauren Burke won the 2017 FoodCorps Victory Growers Award “for a compelling account of hunger and food insecurity,” winning a $5,000 prize for her service site, Moencopi Developers Corporation in Tuba City, AZ. The award, sponsored by C&S Wholesale Grocers, highlights that many children struggle with hunger and food insecurity, and that the food they receive at school is the most important meal they will get all day.

The post A Complex Problem Needs a Complex Solution appeared first on FoodCorps.

The Hawaiian Islands are the most isolated island chain in the world. At 2,300 miles from San Francisco, 3,900 miles from Japan, and 5,500 miles from Australia, you simply can’t get more isolated from the continents. It is on the fringe of human habitation. Over 90% of the food that is consumed in the islands is imported. Were there to be a natural disaster or emergency that would prevent this imported food from getting to Hawai’i, it would only have 10 days worth of food to support its residents at any given time.

At the easternmost end of the chain lies the youngest of the Hawaiian Islands. It is so young, in fact, that it is still being born from the ocean as the volcano Kilauea pours a steady stream of lava down the mountainside and into the ocean today. Hawai’i Island is mostly rural, with only two large towns in a place the size of Rhode Island and Connecticut combined. Then there is Puna- a mostly isolated, rural district on the windward, wet side of Hawai’i Island. Many, if not most, residents live off-grid and there are few services such as healthcare, banking, police, and grocery stores. The majority of Puna residents receive some kind of governmental assistance and nearly 30% receive food stamps. Food insecurity is simply a reality for everyone here, regardless of income.

It is in this setting that I have served as the FoodCorps service member in two low-income public charter schools. This year, I have worked with over 100 students in several different gardens, exploring concepts around science and ecology, art, and nutrition. As a garden educator joyfully growing food with students, it doesn’t always feel food insecure here. We have trees producing food year-round on our campuses and enjoy a growing season that doesn’t really end. However, the dependence on imported food from the Mainland and elsewhere is striking.

School lunch in Hawai’i is dominated by imported foods. Hawai’i has only one school district that covers all of the islands and it generally places orders with vendors that can supply an item for the entire state. Local vendors are therefore blocked out, unable to provide the quantity and lowest price that the large district demands. The School Food Services Branch procurement regulations are therefore a major barrier to addressing childhood hunger in Hawai’i since they prevent local food, which is fresher and more nutrient-dense, from being included in school lunch.

Monique Mironesco writes of school lunch regulations in Hawai’i:

“The stringent food safety rules and regulations [of school lunch in Hawai’i] prevent direct farm-to-school sales, so that children are not able to eat the foods they grow in their own school gardens in the cafeteria, and kitchens are not allowed to accept produce from individual farmers who may be willing to bypass distributors and vendors to provide locally grown produce to school cafeterias because they are not necessarily food safety certified.”

The meals served in Hawai’i’s public schools are often high in fat content and utilize recipes that have remained essentially unchanged for the past 30 years. And although we have thriving gardens at our schools, (over 40% of the public, charter, and independent K-12 schools in the state have a school garden) and fruit trees such as papayas, bananas, citrus, breadfruit, and avocado growing abundantly on our campuses, the barriers to getting these foods into the cafeteria are almost insurmountable without policy change at the state level.

Giving students the opportunity to have hands-on experiences with growing and cooking nutritious foods is another great way to address child hunger in Hawai’i. This spring, I brought a group of 12 middle and high school garden students to a local subsistence farm for a field trip. About 70% of what the farmers there eat (a community of about 14 people) comes from their land. On our field trip, we worked in the gardens and learned about the importance of adding organic matter to build soil in an area where hard, black lava rock has yet to yield to become soil. Next we harvested and cooked a delicious farm to table meal. Students helped prepare the meal of farm-raised chicken stew, pan fried taro and sweet potato, homemade hot sauce, steamed greens, and coconut “bacon.” As we filled our plates with this nutritious local food, I could see the excitement in the eyes of the students. Every single student tried and enjoyed a new dish that day.

As we began to pack up and head back to campus at the end of the day, a high school freshman girl turned to me. She said, “This is one of the best meals I have ever had! Usually, I just eat Spaghetti-Os or things like that for dinner.” In that moment, I saw the power that hands-on lessons around nutritious food have to meet the needs of children who come to school hungry. I saw a seed planted in her mind that day around what our food system could look like. She was able to catch a glimpse of a Hawai’i where we are providing the majority of our calories from our islands, rather than importing them from thousands of miles away in processed, packaged forms.

In my experience, it is this hands-on interaction with growing and preparing food that helps students to form relationships with their local food system in a meaningful way. When students learn to grow and cook food in school, they take these skills home to their families. Many of my students have begun gardening at home after falling in love with growing and cooking. When students are empowered to make healthy choices, they begin to change the buying habits of their families and for themselves as they come into adulthood.

Reducing barriers to sourcing local produce in Hawai’i School Food Services is another important way. Though Hawai’i’s agricultural producers may not immediately be able to produce enough food to fulfill all of the 100,000 meals served in Hawai’i’s schools daily, beginning to shift towards more local sourcing of school lunch products is still worth pursuing because of the positive impact this can have on childhood hunger and health. And as these children become adults, perhaps their experience with school gardens will shift the system further towards nutritious school meal options for the generations to come.

FoodCorps Service Member Carly Wyman was a runner-up in the 2017 FoodCorps Victory Growers Award “for a compelling account of hunger and food insecurity,” winning a $1,000 prize for her service site, Kua O Ka La in Pahoa, HI. The award, sponsored by C&S Wholesale Grocers, highlights that many children struggle with hunger and food insecurity, and that the food they receive at school is the most important meal they will get all day.

The post Addressing Childhood Hunger in Hawai’i’s Schools appeared first on FoodCorps.

Hunger carries different meaning to different people. For me, hunger means it’s been a few hours since my last meal, and I am starting to plan in my head what I may eat next. But in the classrooms at King and Tate Elementary it means something entirely different to over 80% of our students. This was made clear to me when I lead a lesson on food security and hunger with the 3rd graders at both schools. I began with simple questions such as how do you feel when you feel hungry? What time of day do you get hungry? Yes, a few students had answers much like my own would be: “When I start feeling hungry I just get up and go to the fridge!”; “I get hungry when I smell dinner; “Sometimes I get hungry right before lunch”; and so on. But unfortunately, the majority of the answers didn’t just describe a few minutes while waiting for our dinner to be cooked. Most of the answers consisted of, “I get really dizzy and sometimes I feel like I am going to puke”; “I am always hungry because food is expensive”; “ I can’t pay attention in school, and sometimes get really angry and hurt my friends”. Hunger for a multitude of our students is a real problem, a problem that doesn’t just go away after looking in the fridge.

It’s hard to pinpoint exactly what hunger looks like in the two schools where I serve because it is so invasive that it affects every aspects of our students’ lives. You could look at any aspect of a hungry child’s life and connect it back to their malnourished bodies and minds. It takes a toll on their social lives, how they are doing in school, what they can do physically, their sense of self and emotional intelligence, etc. When I am in a classroom and a student is not listening, it is not because they do not want to learn, but often because their hunger is preventing them from doing so. When a student cannot control their emotions or behavior, it is likely that they are hungry or that their bodies are fueled with foods that are insufficient. One student told me it was harder for him to make friends because he gets so angry all the time due to his hunger. What does hunger look like? It looks like a child who is robbed of her full potential, a child who could do anything, but because her body is starved, her mind likewise languishes, a child with a very bleak future.

At a time when education budgets are under such scrutiny, and the future of public education is uncertain some may ask why should we invest in services such as FoodCorps. Why should we be concerned with food education when our schools can’t afford proper books, technologies, and other materials seen as essential for the cultivation of young minds? Some may think that focusing on food, gardens, and nutrition in the classroom is a waste of time, that this sort of education should happen at home. But what good are books and new technology if there is no food at home and all you can focus is on is the pain in your belly?

If we do not invest in these programs, we are setting students, our schools, and our communities up for failure. Our food system has isolated us from food, it has disconnected us from the sources of our food; it has taken away our power to know and to choose what we put in our bodies. If my students do get to eat, they eat foods that are completely devoid of minerals and vitamins that are essential for their development, which is why most of them cannot control their behaviors or emotions, cannot focus in school, and do not develop to their full physical, emotional or mental potential. I am discovering moreover, that even when my students are offered access to fresh, healthy foods, it is alien and strange to most of them; they often do not want to try it, or certainly do not know how to prepare it. Without this knowledge how do we expect them to build healthy eating habits? How can we expect them to make healthy choices?

My first day of service, I walked into the cafeteria at one school to talk to students about food. I asked what their favorite vegetables were and got responses such as “ice cream” or “noodles”. After many lessons inside and outside in the garden, after countless taste tests of new foods in the cafeteria and classrooms, I had one student say “I use to not like lettuce, but after trying it a lot of different ways and seeing how fast it grows, I like it”. This student now has tools to nourish her body, and is open to trying new foods that will help with that process.

For her, and so many students like her, she has gained new power, not only to eat healthy, but to take control over other aspects of her life, especially her ability to focus and learn. Her education was controlled by hunger, but it is now hers to control. This is what FoodCorps service, and other similar programs do. Through investments in preventing childhood hunger in our schools, we educate students about healthy food choices, and in so doing, we are planting the seeds that may just help them reach their potential. By serving and empowering these children, we are seeding not only their future, but ours. Legend has it that a pioneer, gazing for the first time at the Grand Canyon said, “Something big happened here.” Considering the difference that our gardens are making, in the life of even one child, I believe the same can truthfully be stated about FoodCorps, something big is happening here. Please help it grow.

FoodCorps Service Member Mary Grace Stoneking was a runner-up in the 2017 FoodCorps Victory Growers Award “for a compelling account of hunger and food insecurity,” winning a $1,000 prize for her service site, Van Buren School District in Van Buren, AR. The award, sponsored by C&S Wholesale Grocers, highlights that many children struggle with hunger and food insecurity, and that the food they receive at school is the most important meal they will get all day.

The post Hungry for Change appeared first on FoodCorps.

FoodCorps is a national AmeriCorps service program whose corps members connect children to healthy food in school by leading hands-on lessons in growing, cooking and tasting healthy food; partnering with farmers and food service workers to create nutritious and delicious school meals; and collaborating with communities to build a schoolwide culture of health. With these grants and technical assistance from No Kid Hungry corps members will promote breakfast within their schools, implementing improved systems and purchasing the materials and equipment needed to serve high-quality breakfast options to their students in ways that maximize participation and uptake.

“The traditional method of serving school breakfast before school can be ineffective,” says No Kid Hungry’s Laura Hatch. “Something as simple as the time and location where breakfast is served can make all the difference to ensure all students start their day with the nourishment they need to learn.”

No Kid Hungry is working to end childhood hunger by surrounding kids with nutritious meals where they live, learn and play. Fueled by the knowledge that federal nutrition programs such as the School Breakfast Program protect our kids from hunger and have long-lasting effects on academic achievement and health, No Kid Hungry seeks out partnerships that can help amplify the reach and positive impacts of programs like school breakfast. Through this collaboration, breakfast will be offered “after the bell” and in the classroom, making breakfast part of the school day and ensuring that all students have the opportunity to get the nourishment they need to thrive.

“This partnership is exciting because it leverages each of our organization’s greatest assets,” says Cecily Upton, FoodCorps co-founder and Vice President of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships. “No Kid Hungry’s expertise in increasing school meal participation, ensuring that children have daily access to healthy food, and FoodCorps’ service members who drive lasting shifts in school policies, practices and culture that promote healthy school food environments.”

About FoodCorps

FoodCorps connects kids to healthy food in school. Its team of AmeriCorps leaders serves in high-need schools to make sure students learn what healthy food is, fall in love with it, and eat it every day. Corps members team up with educators to deliver lead hands-on lessons in growing, cooking and tasting healthy food; partner with farmers and food service workers to create nutritious and delicious school meals; and collaborate with communities to build a schoolwide culture of health. Building on this foundation of direct impact, FoodCorps pursues systemic strategies that will benefit all of our nation’s 100,000 schools. To learn more visit www.foodcorps.org.

About No Kid Hungry

No child should go hungry in America, but 1 in 5 kids will face hunger this year. Using proven, practical solutions, No Kid Hungry is ending childhood hunger today by ensuring that kids start the day with a nutritious breakfast, are able to get the nutrition they need during the summertime and families learn the skills they need to shop and cook on a budget. When we all work together, we can make sure kids get the healthy food they need. No Kid Hungry is a campaign of national anti-hunger organization Share Our Strength. Join us at NoKidHungry.org.

Contact

Jerusha Klemperer
Communications Director
FoodCorps
646-558-6405
jerusha.klemperer@foodcorps.org

Christy Felling
Director, Media & Public Affairs
No Kid Hungry
202.320.4483
cfelling@strength.org

The post FoodCorps and No Kid Hungry partner to improve students’ access to school breakfast appeared first on FoodCorps.

But not for Mr. Yates’ senior English class at Agee-Lierly Life Preparation Services (ALLPS), an alternative high school in Fayetteville, Arkansas. In his class, students are learning about real issues, and they are trying to come up with real solutions, too. During a unit about food security, a conversation about food waste continued to bubble up among the students. Many of these teenagers work in the food industry, and they see first-hand the amount of food that is thrown away- even when it is still good to eat. They could not believe the amount of waste a single business could produce, nor the fact that they were never allowed to “save” any of this food from getting thrown away by taking it home – even if they were hungry.

Eric Yates, the teacher of this inspiring group, shared, “I think that many of our students may be more keenly aware of food waste, because many of them come from households that are food insecure. That’s one thing I’ve seen being a teacher here – no food is ever wasted. Students are sharing food all the time; they finish a friend’s breakfast before they ever get a chance to throw it away.” Knowing what they knew, these students were tasked with trying to come up with a solution.

To begin, the class was given two imaginary acres of land, and they were to decide what they would do with it. One senior, Ashlynn, had lots of ideas. She thought she’d grow an urban farm, one that would be fun for people to come to. On her farm, there would be lots of events and activities for people to attend, so that eating healthy foods was normal and fun. There would be music festivals, cooking classes, and work on the farm. Other classmates touted similar ideas. Some thought that they could begin volunteering at places around town that are trying to work on some of these issues. One student said, “I would probably like to volunteer at Tri Cycle Farms in Fayetteville, because they do a lot of work to grow food here, and they teach a lot of people about healthy foods.”

Enter Jenni Vaughan. She’s the FoodCorps Service Member at ALLPS. She’s only been there since September, but already she has helped jumpstart many initiatives at the high school. She worked with the district’s Child Nutrition Director, Ally Mrachek to bring the salad bar back into the cafeteria and to serve greens from the garden. Ally and Jenni also worked together to make yogurt parfaits available for breakfast, in addition to all of the other healthy food options and local foods that are already served by Fayetteville Public Schools. Students were included in marketing and promotion of these new foods, and Jenni is helping healthy foods to be even more exciting at ALLPS. She has helped expand the garden and worked with different classes to own projects, like menu planning, grocery budgeting, and even researching the benefits of having an earth oven on campus. She hosts family cooking events through The Kids Cook Monday grant, and integrates gardening, nutrition, and food into other core classes the students have, like Zoology, English, Algebra, and Botany.

Jenni knew about a food recovery program that Tri Cycle Farms had been working on in collaboration with Ozark Natural Foods (the local cooperative grocery store). They weekly pick up foods that the grocery store would be throwing out (think bruised apples, brown bananas, and molding onions). They originally wanted to take this organic food to add to their compost piles to amend the soil on their large urban garden. What they found was that much of the food that they got from the grocery store was still good enough to eat! Seeing this, they began setting foods aside that were still edible before tossing the contents of the buckets into the compost pile. This program continued to grow, and food from these recovery days would go in all different directions. AmeriCorps members that get paid a small living stipend, college students, and others come to volunteer, and take home bags of this still-good food to eat. On days of plenty, they will fill up extra bags to take to families in need, homeless shelters, or retirement centers.

The Tri Cycle Farms and Ozark Natural Foods partnership was so successful, and many were benefitting from this food recovery initiative. Don Bennett (the person at the helm of Tri Cycle Farms’ great work) and some of his AmeriCorps members began to brainstorm how to expand this program. Throughout a year of conversations and planning with the new Whole Foods grocery store in Fayetteville, they came up with a plan to pick up food three times each week. Not just produce, either. It’s mostly packages with expiration dates that have passed or are nearing, dented cans, or items that are phasing out. Even things like milk, cheese, and other high-quality proteins! These are all foods that would have just been tossed to the dumpster, but now when employees at Whole Foods sweep the shelves for items to remove, they put them in boxes in their refrigerators for their Tri Cycle friends to pick up rather than dumping the perfectly useable food items into the trash. Many of the items the team picks us is not even close to its expiration date. So far, Tri Cycle has picked up an average of more than 1,500 pounds of food from there each week. (See Tri Cycle Farms’ blog post about their food recovery project here!)

The program is still budding, and Tri Cycle is still figuring out how to distribute all of its bounty. But, partnerships abound! 7 Hills (a homeless shelter), Salvation Army (they feed many people with their free meals) and Dwelling Place (this church has a “Hope for the Hungry” program) all receive and process this recovered food. Tri Cycle also partners with the non-profit Seeds that Feed each week, who then distributes to their 50 partners through their “CareCropping” program. The Tri Cycle team is so pleased to be able provide this ongoing source of high-quality foods to these organizations. But, their ideas haven’t stopped rolling. One thing they know for sure is the power of education with healthy foods. When people have experiences learning about, preparing, and trying new foods, they are much more likely to eat and accept the foods than they would be if they had never experienced that food before. When a partnership with FoodCorps in Northwest Arkansas was introduced, Tri Cycle Farms was excited to see what this might look like.

On a cold Wednesday morning, Jenni Vaughan went to Whole Foods with the Tri Cycle crew to pick up the treasures that had been left for them. Jenni did a little “shopping” through all of the recovered food, and left with three heaping boxes of foods that she would take to ALLPS, totalling 131 pounds. Through some creative menu planning, Jenni designed her lesson for the next day with students from Mr. Yates’ English class. During their quest to find some solutions to the glaring issue of food insecurity and the problem of food waste, the class and Mr. Yates had decided they wanted to prepare a meal out of only food that was going to be thrown out (recovered food, as we’ve been calling it).

The next day, the students came in to the FoodCorps classroom, donning Arkansas Farm to School and FoodCorps Sprouts Scouts aprons, looking hesitantly at the piles of “healthy foods” on the tables. The menu for the day that the class would be preparing was: beet hummus with pita chips and summer squash, mushroom and arugula pizza, and a pineapple-banana frozen whip. The best part? The herbs and arugula came from the school’s garden, and all the rest of the food was recovered from the grocery store (minus the cheese that topped the pizza).

While the initial opinions were that “mushrooms make me gag” and “that beet hummus looks nasty,” the time spent chopping, mixing, arranging, and cooking the foods slowly began to open minds of these teenagers. As they began to smell and taste the “fruits of their labor,” quotes of “hey, this isn’t that bad” and “I could probably make this at home” began to ring out. They were proud of their work, and pretty amazed that they could create such a masterpiece out of “trash.” Even the school principal, Dr. Hoy, was drawn in by the smells and gratefully took a plate offered her by the students. The class got to take home foods that were left after meal prep, and the remaining food hit the shelves of the school’s food pantry for students, families, and community members.

After observing this event, I think it’s safe to say these students were inspired and encouraged to both be more conscious of foods that are getting thrown away and to try new healthy foods. Jenni has already returned for another food recovery day, and has many plans up her sleeve as to how she might use this food for educational programming, and to send home with students that need it. Feeding two birds with one scone, as one might say.

The post Let’s Talk About Food Waste appeared first on FoodCorps.

I know that nearly 90 percent of the students at the 3 elementary schools I serve qualify for free or reduced price lunch, and thus are likely coming from food insecure families. However, these moments in which I can clearly see the face of hunger still have a great effect on me. Hunger is generally associated with people unable to obtain enough food, and these days, we know a nourishing meal is more than just the quantity of calories; it is about quality. Those two cookies may have had “enough” calories but did not contain the vitamins, minerals, phytonutrients, fiber and other life-giving components that whole, unprocessed food contains.

As a FoodCorps service member, I help connect kids to real food to help them grow up healthy. I do this by engaging kids directly in growing vegetables in the school garden as well as making healthy snacks in classrooms and afterschool programs. I also work with teachers to have them lead these positive experiences, providing them with training and resources to better incorporate fruits and vegetables and garden activities into their classes.

Through these activities, kids not only eat real food, but learn skills to grow and prepare nutritious meals on their own. However, efforts to expand school gardens, prepare food, or increase access to local produce are a struggle in my schools. Parents cannot support farm to school opportunities because they work multiple low-paying jobs.  Teachers must focus their instructional time on boosting test scores rather than offering food-based activities. Staff turnover is high, preventing continued, high levels of commitment to school gardens.

Though these fundamental issues are nearly impossible to tackle in a short-term position that does not allow political advocacy, my experience with FoodCorps has given me the support to one day become a leader in this field and make significant, lasting change. Service members have the opportunity to join Communities of Learning, Inquiry, and Practice to delve deeper into policy, community organizing, and topics of equity. At national trainings, we get to hear from food system leaders such as LaDonna Redmond and Deb Eschmeyer. We are encouraged to ask tough questions to our national staff, are given platform to our voices through media, and are involved in important changes to our organization and future efforts to foster equity, diversity, and inclusion. These experiences and opportunities for reflection, discussion, and growth strengthen our organization and its emerging leaders in tackling larger issues.

In my years of service, I have helped to nourish kids by increasing access to food that will feed their bodies and minds. But just as importantly, I have had direct connections with hungry kids and the struggles of the communities they come from. FoodCorps not only helps kids to grow up healthy but gives service members the experiences and tools to one day address larger systemic issues that result in hunger.

This essay was a runner up for the 2016 FoodCorps Victory Growers Award. The award, sponsored by C&S Wholesale Grocers,  highlights that many children struggle with hunger and food insecurity, and that the food they receive at school is the most important meal they will get all day.

The post Real Food and Real Skills to Combat Hunger appeared first on FoodCorps.

The hunger is often hidden in my classrooms. Students do not just tell me they did not have dinner last night. That truth is uncovered when I read between the lines.

“Where does food come from?”

I ask this question during many of my nutrition and gardening lessons, and students’ answers reveal the issue of child hunger in our community. Food comes from boxes and cans, gas stations, and fast food chains (they can name every one, but do not always recognize vegetables I bring to class). The Pre-K and 1^st grade students I serve with excitedly shout out these answers, but the reality of these answers is not as exciting. Some of my students walk to gas stations with a couple of dollars to buy their dinners. These stores have processed foods high in sugar and fat, and very few fresh fruits and vegetables. Every child should have access to food that will help them grow and thrive, but that is not always feasible.

I have watched teachers give out food to families so they know they will eat that night, seen students beg for the extra fresh fruit or vegetable snack, and had one student cry because there were no seconds during a lesson. During a vegetable taste test, a sixth grader took a small bite of broccoli, turned his nose up and set it back on his paper. He turned to me and said, “Is all we get is vegetables today?” Before I could even respond, another student exclaimed, “Man, it is free food! Just eat it, you don’t turn that down.” This same young man took home many of the leftover vegetables. It took a while for me to fully process this moment. These students are eleven years old and have to consider the cost of food being a factor of how well they will eat in a day. Our students at DPS have to face many challenges beyond doing well on tests and being good students.

There is no doubt food access, food security, and child hunger are issues students of Detroit face. The real issue is, however: How do we help? How do we ensure children have food to eat when they walk out of school?

There is no one solution. Detroit is still writing its comeback story and with each struggle Detroit faces, it has the opportunity to learn and create new solutions. The DPS Office of School Nutrition, the Detroit School Garden Collaborative and FoodCorps are helping improve food access and nutrition education in DPS. The Detroit School Garden Collaborative is a school garden program that shows students food does not have to come from a box or a can, they can grow it. Students love being in the garden, and many share stories about how their family members garden too. Throughout the course of this year, I have watched many students grow and learn to appreciate the garden and the food that comes from it. The biggest success stories are when students take vegetables home and come back to tell me how they cooked and ate them with their family. Programs like the Detroit School Garden Collaborative educate and empower students and families to practice healthier habits and learn to grow their own food. That is how we work towards a solution to hunger, by putting people first.

“Where does food come from?”

This question is not easy for everyone to answer in Detroit. When we start the conversation about child hunger, it opens the door to countless other social issues. Hunger is not the only struggle Detroit students face; many of them come from broken homes, have no permanent residences, or may not have a clean clothes to put on in the morning. That does not make the problem too big to solve, because we have to start somewhere. When I see students discover a new favorite fruit or vegetable, lick their plates clean after we cook together, and get over their fear of soil and worms in the garden, I know positive changes are happening. It is our job, as a community, to not give up on Detroit or the students of Detroit Public Schools.

The DPS Office of School Nutrition has a motto: “It takes more than books for children to learn.” Children need encouragement, opportunities, love and nourishment to grow. I am proud to be a part of this as a FoodCorps service member. My students have taught me more this year than I could have ever imagined. When I look at them, I do not see hungry, less fortunate children; I see potential. I believe in them, and their futures. They deserve the same chances as all other students in America. Together, I know we can help show these students just how valuable they are.

This essay was a runner up for the 2016 FoodCorps Victory Growers Award. The award, sponsored by C&S Wholesale Grocers,  highlights that many children struggle with hunger and food insecurity, and that the food they receive at school is the most important meal they will get all day.

The post A Hunger for the Motor City appeared first on FoodCorps.

Repackaging over two thousand pounds of turnips may not sound like the most fun way to spend a long weekend, but when combined with good friends, and the opportunity to serve the food insecure in our community, a seemingly menial task is given great significance.

On January 19th, ten FoodCorps Connecticut service members came together in honor of Martin Luther King Jr to take a break from their regular service activities and combine efforts on a single project focused on an issue significant to the communities they serve, hunger.

“Life’s most persistent and urgent question is: ‘What are you doing for others?”

-Martin Luther King Junior

As a FoodCorps service member, I can say with confidence, that I am doing a great deal for others, most significantly for the youth in New Britain, where my service site Community Health Center of New Britain is located. This day of service, gave FoodCorps service members like myself the opportunity to serve outside of their service sites and in their greater state community. In the FoodCorps Connecticut family, ten of us spent the afternoon at FoodShare, a local organization that secures donated food from the food industry and distributes that food to food pantries, community kitchens, shelters, and other programs serving those in need.

Together we created an assembly line, turning fifty pound bags of turnips in to portions suitable for a family. I was on the inspecting and bagging team, as I carefully examined the turnips to ensure their best quality I daydreamed of all the delicious soups and stews that would be made.

Organizations like FoodShare, FoodCorps service members, and conscerned citizens agree with Dr. Martin Luther King Junior, access to food is a human right.

“I have the audacity to believe that people everywhere can have three meals a day for their bodies, education and culture for the minds and dignity, equality and freedom for their spirits.”

As Krizl lifted the last fifty pound bag of turnips off the pallet, a sense of accomplishment surrounded the room. That was, until the second pallet, stacked even taller then the last with bags of turnips, came in on a fork lift. It takes more than a group of ten to ensure that all those who need a healthy meal get it, but sometimes it only takes one passionate person to inspire others to do something great for their communities.

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