NEW Food Education in the Classroom Microcredential for K-5 educators! Next session: Sept.7-Oct. 18.
“No matter how healthy the food on their lunch plate is, for students to feel nourished, they must be in a space where they feel as though they are welcome and understood.” Zoe Flavin was a runner-up in the 2018 FoodCorps Victory Growers Award “for a compelling account of hunger and food insecurity,” winning a $1,000 prize for her service site.
Each year we invite new members to join our Alumni Council to bring fresh perspectives and passions to the group. They are here to support all alumni in launching initiatives they’d like to start, in lifting their voices to FoodCorps’ National team, and in advancing their career goals post-FoodCorps. Meet the Council members below and … Continued
As a FoodCorps AmeriCorps service member, I got pretty creative in the name of connecting kids to healthy food in school. I donned vegetable costumes in the cafeteria, danced around in the garden in front of a live audience of 30 children, and hauled five-gallon buckets of compost through the hallways, to name a few.
Years before I became a busy FoodCorps AmeriCorps service member, I was already a dedicated journaler. My seminal journal entries usually began with a dramatic “Dear Diary…” and continued with thorough retellings of my second-grade days. A decade and a half later, my journals are more like anchors that ground me within the daily whirl.
This June, FoodCorps brought together 20 aspiring school food service leaders to help them explore careers in school food, build their network, and get hands-on experience working in school food. They traveled from all over the country to learn from leaders in the field. Vanika Jethwa CT ’17, an alum who joined us from Keene, NH, shares reflections on her experience at the training.
Catch up on the latest news about the farm bill, AmeriCorps funding, and school meals.
Think the Farm Bill doesn’t affect you? Think again. Most people know the Farm Bill as covering agricultural laws and farmer subsidy payments. But it also covers a whole lot more, and impacts everyone who eats in this country—in other words, everyone.
In a town north of Los Angeles, Mar Vista Elementary School stands almost completely surrounded by farmland. On one side is a field of strawberries, the crop that made the town famous. On the other, it’s rows and rows of hoop houses containing what they’re pretty sure is artichokes. The town has long been an agricultural community, and many of the students at Mar Vista are from families that work in the fields.
Thanks to the efforts of a diverse coalition of advocates, the House’s historically bad farm bill proposal did not garner enough votes to pass. Also, FoodCorps is working with fellow national service organizations to call on Congress to again reject the President’s proposal to eliminate funding for national service.
FoodCorps service is open to creativity, and service members rely on their own personal strengths all while building upon the strengths that already exist in the communities that they serve. From my Connecticut cohort to all two hundred plus service members spread across the nation, you can imagine how every single service experience is unique.