As a public entity, the City of Greenville plans to address food insecurity. We strive to educate families about various ways to acquire healthy foods to promote a more healthy and active community overall. As a result, the City of Greenville has distributed over 1,000,000 pounds of food to residents. The City of Greenville also partnered with Joel Berg, CEO of Hunger Free America, to provide information to residents regarding how to get government assistance to receive access to healthy foods. We strongly believe that FoodCorps’ mission and programming will bring value to our broader work because if the youth are educated about healthy foods, they could educate their families. Thus, increasing the likelihood of healthy food acquisition.

The City of Greenville FoodCorps program encourages students to try new things. From taste-testing to gardening, every student who participates in the FoodCorps program will be immersed in a hands-on experience that they will remember for a lifetime. Our program’s goal is to create a domino effect of change in our community: Students will learn about nutrition, gardening, and healthy lifestyle choices from the FoodCorps service member; the same students will go home and educate their families about what they learned; and ultimately, the students’ families adopt the lessons taught by the FoodCorps service member, thus increasing the occurrences of healthy lifestyle changes in the city of Greenville and surrounding areas.

The City of Greenville FoodCorps program includes four service members who teach nutritional lessons to public school students. Each service member is assigned two schools. Every school has its vision for the program. Therefore, the FoodCorps program in one school may look slightly different from the program in another school. Regardless, all service members strive to cater to the desires of the school while also working towards the FoodCorps organization’s overall mission: connecting children to nourishing foods. As a program governed by a local government entity, the City of Greenville FoodCorps program is highly visible in the community. Along with their daily school visitations to instruct students, service members are required to assist with numerous community events. A few examples of the City of Greenville FoodCorps program’s community outreach include: Helping with food giveaways, serving plates in a soup kitchen, organizing canned goods in the local food pantry, distributing nutrition material at health fairs, and hosting community events.

In collaboration with community site partners, FoodCorps Mississippi serves over ten schools, reaching hundreds of students with hands-on experiences in gardening, nutrition, and food preparation. With a presence in the Mississippi Delta and the Capitol, service members are impacting while learning from both urban and rural communities across the state. Join FoodCorps Mississippi to serve up change with a cohort of community-centered changemakers!