- Author: Deborah Schnur
FoodCorps has held a special place in my heart ever since I served as a FoodCorps service member at Phelan Elementary during the 2019-2020 school year. It was hard work and also immensely rewarding to connect kids with healthy food and share the joy of gardening. I loved seeing the smiles on students' faces when they harvested their first tomato from the school garden and tasted their first “rainbow” smoothie.
FoodCorps' Work
FoodCorps' mission is to “partner with schools and communities to nourish kids' health, education, and sense of belonging.” Their vision is that “every child, in every school, experiences the joy and power of food”. As a member of the AmeriCorps network, FordCorps provides leadership and educational opportunities for service members in limited-resource communities. In addition, FoodCorps advocates for policy change to promote equity and sustainability in the school food environment.
The Service Member's Role
Service members must complete at least 1700 service hours during an 11-month term. They are paid a living stipend and receive a Segal Education Award after successfully completing their term. Those who serve in California also receive a California for All Education Award.
FoodCorps service members focus on three main areas of impact: leading hands-on lessons, influencing nourishing school meals, and building a schoolwide culture of health. In the first area, they teach students to grow, prepare, and taste new foods with interactive lessons linked to academic standards. To influence school meals, service members conduct taste tests, promote healthy food choices in the cafeteria, and work with school district administrators and staff to add local foods to school meals. To build a culture of health, service members collaborate with the entire school community–including teachers, administrators, and families–to plan activities such as family cooking nights and garden work days.
Master Gardeners Help with Garden Training
FoodCorps service members start the school year with a wide range of gardening and farming experience. Some have majored in agriculture, and others have grown only houseplants. Most are expected to start or maintain gardens at the schools where they serve.
To provide their service members with a basic level of gardening know-how, FoodCorps site supervisors in Los Angeles (Rachel Black), Upland (Cassidy Furnari), and San Diego (Janelle Manzano) planned a joint garden training class. Cassidy, the Upland Unified School District (UUSD) Farm to School Manager, asked the San Bernardino County Master Gardeners to help deliver the training at Baldy View Elementary, which has an extensive vegetable garden, native plant garden, and orchard. Maggie O'Neill, the Master Gardener Coordinator, and I were excited to accept the challenge and prepare for the class.
For the next half-hour, I led a hands-on demonstration of how to teach composting to students. I asked the service members to line up and add greens (food waste) to the compost bins followed by browns (mulch). Then everyone took turns watering the compost piles and turning them with shovels. That's all there was to it! To continue the decomposition process, compost needs to be watered and turned on a regular basis. For reference, I gave the service members copies of a composting resource sheet and my favorite compost guide from LA Compost.
After the training, the FoodCorps service members, site supervisors, and Master Gardeners gathered for a healthy lunch including figs, tomatoes, cucumbers, and squash harvested from the Upland school gardens. A fitting end to a productive day! I hope this experience inspires some of the service members to become Master Gardeners in the future.
Meet the Upland USD FoodCorps Service Members
Valerie Tu has returned for a second year with FoodCorps after spending a year as a Fullbright Scholar and English Teaching Assistant in Taiwan. She is teaching at Baldy View Elementary and Citrus Elementary. During her first year at UUSD in 2020-2021, Valerie's interaction with the students was entirely virtual due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Valerie graduated from the New York University Gallitin School of Individualized Study with a Bachelor of Arts, concentrating on the politics of food. While studying at NYU, she also worked as a farm operations intern, a resident assistant, and a culinary intern at the Museum of Food and Drink among other activities.
FoodCorps' Impact
I am so grateful to Valerie, Meagan, and all the FoodCorps service members who devote a year or more to promoting food justice in schools and communities across the county. Last school year, FoodCorps service members taught 15,000 lessons, led 6,000 food tastings, and supported over 350 gardens nationwide. In four Upland schools, approximately 1,400 students received biweekly FoodCorps programming, and nearly 2,000 students participated in lunchtime activities and engagement during the school year. Through these types of hands-on learning activities, service members will help FoodCorps reach its goal for every child to have access to food education and nourishing food in school by 2030.
Have you enjoyed reading this blog? Do you have questions? Need help with school gardens or environmental education? If so, send an email to dschnur@ucanr.edu. I look forward to hearing from you.
- Author: Susana C. Bruzzone-Miller, RDN
Fall Student Farm came to a close last week with a celebration. Student farmers taught parents and siblings how to lay irrigation tape and plant kale seeds. Some shared excerpts from their farm journals. To the delight of Ashley Parrish Decker, Food Corps Service Member and Student Farm lead, the students had nothing but great things to say about their experience at HAREC. The highlight of the afternoon entailed of making…and enjoying veggie pizzas and smoothies made in the bicycle-blender.
Fall Student Farm is offered to Balboa Middle School. The program resumes in spring with DeAnza Middle School, both in Ventura Unified School District. HAREC Student Farm is a collaboration with VUSD and FoodCorps.
- Author: Alison L Kent
Hansen Agricultural Research and Extension Center is located in Santa Paula near Ventura on California's Central Coast. It is a microcosm of Ventura County's rich agricultural heritage, down to the nineteenth-century Faulkner House and historic barns and vintage farm equipment as well as in the particular mix of crops grown there. The top ten crops grown in Ventura County, supported by research at Hansen—strawberries, lemons, raspberries, nursery stock, celery, avocados, tomatoes, peppers, cut flowers and cilantro--are highlighted in the demonstration garden section of the farm. Research plots include blackberry variety trials, strawberry trials, and an experimental plot of Arundo donax to explore ways to control this noxious weed that chokes the county's waterways.
This trip, my first, coincided with the Ventura Unified School District's FoodCorps program as the students visited their Farm Project plot and counted the pollinators – honeybees – that were foraging in the flowering cilantro and bok choi. Later these students took turns interviewing each other and recording the interviews with their phones.
Each of UC ANR's nine REC are fascinating, each unique, each an excellent resource for their local foodshed as well as the larger agricultural and scientific community.
- Author: Jeannette E. Warnert
FoodCorps was formed when President Obama signed legislation in 2009 to engage AmeriCorps in building a more sustainable, healthful and equitable food system in the United States. FoodCorps trains service members to nurture in youth an enduring relationship with healthy food and sends them to underserved areas, where they educate students about gardening and eating garden-fresh produce.
FoodCorps, which served 12 states last year, adds California, Hawaii and New Jersey in 2013. Pending funding, 12 service members will be placed with 10 organizations in California.
“We are thrilled to have been chosen to host a service member,” said Dorothy Smith, UCCE advisor in the Central Sierra office. “Our service member will build interest and participation in the fruit and vegetable gardens we have in Calaveras County schools. A few schools don’t have a garden, and we’ll get those up and running.”
The new FoodCorps service member will work closely with the UCCE CalFresh youth nutrition education program and the UCCE Master Gardener program. Also, Kevin Hesser, the teacher/garden coordinator for Calaveras Unified School District, will collaborate with the service member.
Smith said UC Cooperative Extension and the Calaveras Unified School District decided to apply for the service member when they realized that the goals of the FoodCorps program closely matched their own efforts to enhance youth nutrition by gardening.
“We want people, and especially kids, to eat whole foods, more fruits and vegetables,” Smith said. “We know that when kids plant broccoli, tend it and pick it, they are much more likely to try it. Once people realize a vine-ripened tomato tastes totally different than the ones they buy from the store, they are more likely to grow their own produce and eat it.”
The FoodCorps program also offers a unique experience to the person chosen for the paid position. Service members are often recent college graduates looking to make a difference in the world while gaining work experience before beginning their careers. UC Cooperative Extension will be involved in selecting the candidate for the local program. Applications are due March 24. Apply on the FoodCorps website.
For more information about the FoodCorps program in Calaveras County, contact Dorothy Smith, (209) 754-6476, dorsmith@ucanr.edu.