Healthy partnerships: schools, families and businesses

Posted on | May 5, 2009 | 7 Comments

Pattie Baker has a terrific post about her efforts to change the way food is viewed and promoted in her daughter’s school system. Her school gets extra money the way many schools do, by partnering with an area fast food restaurant for a “fun family night out” with a portion of the proceeds going to the school. Go take a look–she’s got a bunch of informative links in addition to her own great story.

So after I read her post and followed a few of the links, I was thinking how cool it is that Lila enjoys working in the garden with me, and how at her school (the lab school on campus) all of the kids love the school garden. I wondered how difficult it would be for schools to take that partnership model and apply those principals and reap the same rewards by partnering with a local farm stand, green market or farmers’ market. Our region’s challenge is the short growing season and lining that up with when school is in session, but there’s enough overlap for some arrangement to come to fruition. I intend to bring this idea to the table at our first Haymaker Farmers’ Market board meeting. There’s got to be a way the market can build a healthy relationship with our area children and their schools. And maybe as our market grows into its new incarnation, we can hire Lisa
to visit and do a training on her fantastic Sprouts at the Market Program.

Another idea is to have that fun family night out at a restaurant or cafe that makes local and sustainable business choices. That one’s much harder to come by in our community, as I’m sure it is in many others–none of our restaurants work with local producers or growers. But I believe that the tide is shifting and that the sea change is heading our way. I have heard several people talking about food service businesses they would like to open in Kent–from cafés to coffee shops to coffee roasters, and all of them have used phrases like locally produced, organic, local farms, and sustainable.

We also have a group of young families in our town who are interested in working together on various environmental projects. One of them is to bring healthier foods into the public school system. They’re looking at the elementary level because their children are just entering the system this year and they’re already shocked by what passes for lunch. Many of them are vegetarian or vegan, and they grow some of their own foods already. They frequent the area farmers’ markets and health food co-op, and buy memberships in a growing number of CSAs. They’re finding that their children’s first exposure to unhealthy food is happening in the school system and they’re not happy about it…not happy at all. It sounds like they might just have the energy needed to agitate for change.

One of the moms is organizing a meeting for interested families with the help of the Kent Environmental Council. The purpose of this meeting is to figure out areas of interest for environmental projects and then set up task groups and action plans. The school lunch thing is one, another is cooperative gardening in neighborhoods to share food and possibly sell at market, as well as donate a portion of each harvest to the area shelters.

I know it can take a long time to make big changes in systems that are so firmly and deeply entrenched in old ways. But I’m encouraged to hear that so many people are putting their attention on the problem and are looking for ways they can begin to chip away at it in their own neighborhoods. I’m thrilled to see it happening in my neighborhood. I believe the more voices that join together, the more likely we’ll be heard; the more hands that pick up tools, the more likely we’ll build the world we want.

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