HLA Midway Meeting Hosted by Yummly
Our sixth year of the Healthy Living Ambassadors Garden Program ran March through May this Spring. The 30 teen Ambassadors taught 120 third graders across 6 CalFresh eligible elementary schools in San Mateo County. The twenty afterschool lessons were centered around 3 components: nutrition, physical activity, and vegetable gardening. In addition to meeting with their third graders each week the teens had three additional opportunities to come together for teen centric activities. These were the Orientation Day, the Midway Meeting, and the Thank You dinner.
Our Midway Meeting was hosted by Yummly, a local tech company in Redwood City. Yummly is a recipe aggregate website, culling recipes and organizing them according to user interest. We felt they could provide a great enrichment opportunity for our teens because their work is a mix of technology and food. The Saturday morning event was a mix of business and fun.
First, we reviewed the program thus far and planned for the next 5 weeks. Yummly then provided a catered lunch and facilitated the rest of the event. They led the teens in a series of activities such as a tour of the workspace and a description of their current work projects. Four of the employees spoke to the teen group, explaining how they developed their career paths and arrived at their current jobs with Yummly. The meeting was completed with a serving of an awesome chocolate cake freshly baked in Yummly’s test kitchen, along with the opportunity to help them name it. It was a great meeting and added another dimension to our teens’ experience in the HLA program.
Here are a few comments the teens had about the event:
“I think it was really cool to see the inner workings of the company and how everyone worked together to create Yummly. It was also interesting to see how food and nutrition could be combined with jobs like data scientists or marketing.”
“I really liked seeing their office and being introduced to the app! It was pretty nice to see a fun office environment compared to the usual image of an office. I also really loved the cake!"
“It was really interesting seeing their office and how every part of the company is divided. Also, their meeting rooms were so fun to learn about and how some of their walls could be used like whiteboards.”