Posts Tagged: school gardens

UC Cooperative Extension will host a FoodCorps service member

When FoodCorps begins operating in California this year, one of its "service members" will be hosted by UC Cooperative Extension in San Andreas, said an article in the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

FoodCorps is a national organization that connects kids with healthy food. It selected two non-profit organizations - Life Lab and Community Alliance with Family Farmers - to administer the California program. Those two organizations selected 10 hosts, including UCCE.

According to its website, FoodCrops "strives to give all youth an enduring relationship with healthy food. We do that by placing motivated leaders in limited-resource communities for a year of public service."

The paid service members:

• Teach kids about what healthy food is and where it comes from
• Build and tend school gardens
• Bring high-quality local food into public school cafeterias

Building school gardens is a one goal of the FoodCorps program.

Combining nutrition with academics yields results

A three-year UC Berkeley study shows that students who get a steady curriculum of gardening, cooking and nutrition have significantly better eating habits than children who don't get the same instruction, according to an article in the San Francisco Chronicle.

The report, by UC Berkeley's Dr. Robert C. and Veronica Atkins Center for Weight and Health, looks at how an integrated approach to food education at the elementary-school level contributes to children's desire to eat fruits and vegetables.

School gardens can change eating behaviors.

Master Gardeners help school kids grow veggies

An inner-city Los Angeles school has a small vegetable garden that is overseen by a University of California Cooperative Extension Master Gardener, according to a story published yesterday in the Daily Breeze.

"This may be the only place they can have access to nature," the story quoted Master Gardener Kris Lauritson. "It's an outdoor classroom."

The school serves primarily Latino students; about 80 percent qualify for free and reduced lunches.

The program teaches students about healthy diets and gives them a chance to taste fresh foods they may not normally have at home. Students eat what they grow - turnips and broccoli, lettuce and spinach, soybeans, potatoes and cabbage.

Alice Acevedo, a school office worker observing the students as they worked in the garden, told reporter Douglas Morino the kids won't touch fresh fruits and vegetables put out in the cafeteria at lunch.

"But once they grow it themselves, they can't get enough. They're taking pride in what they're doing," Acevedo was quoted.

Los Angeles County's 181 Master Gardeners volunteered 9,272 hours in 2008, serving 87,376 low-income gardeners at 28 community gardens, 46 school gardens, 15 shelter gardens, 5 senior gardens and 13 fairs and farmers markets. For more information on the program and its services, see the LA Common Ground Web site.

It's worth clicking through to the Daily Breeze to see the photographs that accompany the school garden story. The off-axis, vivid and creative images are uncommon in photojournalism. I asked ANR Communications Services media services manager Mike Poe about the trendy garden art.

He said a lot of hip, cool, current video is shot that way.

"The photos are emulating that style to appeal to a young audience or indicate the subject is young," Poe said. "It's a technique I'd use very judiciously."

The school garden story and photos also appeared in the Pasadena Star-News.

LA's 2008 Master Gardener graduates.

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