Programs

Plant A Thousand Gardens Collaborative Nutrition Initiative

PLANTING THE SEEDS FOR A LIFETIME OF HEALTHY EATING


At-risk public school students selected for "ground-breaking" nutrition pilot made possible by a generous grant from Health Foundation of South Florida

To address the need to change the eating habits and improve the diet of school-aged children and their parents, Health Foundation of South Florida (HFSF), in July, awarded The Education Fund a $200,000 grant for the Plant A Thousand Gardens Collaborative Nutrition Initiative (CNI). The Education Fund, in partnership with Miami-Dade County Public Schools, Slow Food Miami, and others will assist schools in implementing an innovative hands-on, or rather, hands-in-the-dirt, approach to healthy diet education

The initiative engages students, over the course of the school year, to plant and maintain vegetable and herb gardens on school grounds while using those gardens to educate about healthy eating and nutrition. Organizers hope the two-year study will nurture more than tomatoes and carrots, as parents will be engaged throughout the entire process, community gardeners and health advocates will be invited to participate, and school leaders will share their results as a blueprint for future nutritional literacy.

The Thousand Gardens project will initially involve 220 second-grade students from five Miami-Dade County Public Elementary schools with high concentrations of ethnically-diverse populations from lower-income families. This fall, two classes at each of the five pilot schools will begin planting their vegetable gardens, supervised by classroom teachers and the school's assistant principal. Besides each student's apprenticeship in botany and agriculture, they will study lessons incorporating nutritional literacy, dietary choices and culinary taste education into science, math language arts and arts curriculum. Parents and families will attend evening and weekend workshops, discussing many of the same topics and sharing family recipes and eating traditions.

By using an Action-Research approach to the Plant A Thousand Gardens project, schools' staff will not only be engaged but will have the documentation needed to advocate for the adoption of the program district-wide. Through Action Research, team members will research the issue, develop a hypothesis in the form of a question, implement the project, collect data, and analyze and publish the results.

Organizers expect the research data will show significant positive results, which will be disseminated to all teachers and schools for future district-wide implementation. The five school teams will meet monthly to share and analyze collected data, and professors from Barry University will consult with the school leaders as curriculum and training professionals. Students will be surveyed throughout the study on their eating habits and their knowledge of nutrition.

The project is directed at elementary-school students because dietary preferences and eating patterns form early in life and set the stage for long-term health prospects. The ultimate objective of the Plant A Thousand Gardens Collaborative Nutrition Initiative is to significantly change eating patterns in children and their families in ways that will last a lifetime.

Health Foundation of South Florida, a not-for-profit grant-making foundation, is dedicated to expanding access to affordable, quality health care and providing funding that directly benefits the health and well being of underserved individuals in Broward, Miami-Dade and Monroe counties. Since its inception in 1993, the Foundation has awarded more than $70 million in grants and direct program support.

Additional support for CNI is provided by The Blue Foundation, Embrace a Healthy Florida Initiative, Assurant, The Ethel & George W. Kennedy Foundation and Dade Community Foundation's Fun and Fit as a Family Fund.

For more information, please contact Corey Yugler at 305-892-5099 ext. 22 or e-mail cyugler@educationfund.org.
Photos by Peter Uttal