Plant A Thousand Gardens Collaborative Nutrition Initiative
PLANTING THE SEEDS FOR A LIFETIME OF HEALTHY EATING
Simply put, the urgency to educate children on their bodies has become as critical as improving their minds.
The Plant A Thousand Gardens Collaborative Nutrition Initiative (CNI) took root in five M-DCPS elementary
schools in 2007 to address academic achievement while confronting the obesity
epidemic that afflicts one of three American children. The program uses edible
gardens as outdoor learning laboratories to instill in children the desire to
eat vegetables, the knowledge to reduce intake of unhealthy foods and the love
of learning in all subjects. Based around the hands-on planting and harvesting
of edible vegetable and herb gardens, students become enthusiastic participants
in an interdisciplinary experience that combines the teaching of nutrition with
learning in science, math, art, reading and writing. Meanwhile, parents work in
the gardens, contribute recipes and attend workshops, where they learn ways to
cook healthy.
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 initially involved 220 second-grade students from five Miami-Dade County Public Elementary schools with high concentrations of ethnically diverse populations from lower-income families. In three years, the program has expanded to more than 28 elementary and middle schools throughout the district. Parents and families attend evening and weekend workshops, discussing many of the same topics and sharing family recipes and eating traditions.
The foundation of the edible gardens program is teacher training. In 2009-10, 50 teachers attended eight Saturday training sessions where they received mentoring from professors from Barry University on how to plant and maintain their gardens, integrate them into the curriculum, reach out to the community, collect data to evaluate the program and advocate for nutrition literacy and healthy eating. The success of our schools where teachers have assumed ownership of the gardens, and initiated training of new teachers, has inspired us to make “teaching the teachers” the catalyst of future expansion.
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.
CNI receives signature sponsorship from Wachovia, a Wells Fargo Company. Additional support for CNI is provided by Assurant, The Ethel & George W. Kennedy Foundation, Paradise Farms Organic and Dade Community Foundation's Fun and Fit as a Family Fund.
For more information, please contact Jeannie Necessary at 305-892-5099 ext. 12 or e-mail jnecessary@educationfund.org.
Photos by Peter Uttal & Jeannie Necessary
Signature sponsorship by
