Teaching Kids to Eat Healthy by Growing Their Own Food
By Jesse Hertstein, Senior Corporate Citizenship Specialist, Amway Global
We want all kids to eat healthy. And we know that for most of us, the best route to getting proper nutrition is by eating more fresh fruits and vegetables. But how do you impact urban youth who may not know how to change their habits, and may not be able to afford fresh produce?
Amway Global kicked off a new three-year partnership with Boys & Girls Clubs of America this year to impact nutrition by gardening at Clubs around the country. The Positive Sprouts program works with experts from the Green Education Foundation to offer curriculum and activities that teach healthy eating to young gardeners.
In its first year, the Positive Sprouts program will build seven gardens at Boys & Girls Clubs in Michigan, California, Washington, Colorado, Pennsylvania and Florida. The program will create a scalable model that will eventually be offered to more than 4,000 Clubs around the country.
While the Club members will work the gardens and reap the fruits (and vegetables) of their labor, Amway Global is mobilizing its Independent Business Owners in each city to “adopt” their local Club. These Amway Global volunteers help out in the initial planting of the garden, and will come back to help with the maintenance throughout the growing season.
Amway Global brings the expertise and passion of its Independent Business Owners and employees to bear on the issue of nutrition. Its top selling Nutrilite vitamins are plant based, and the company grows many of the ingredients for its vitamins at some of the largest organic farms in the world.
You can read about our events in Philadelphia, Denver, Seattle and Grand Rapids on our blog and view a video here.
Great great idea for youth engagement around their OWN nutrition. There are so many social media opportunities here, but one of the coolest would be to partner with the local “crop mob” constituents. This is a very hot movement (see NYT story:http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/28/magazine/28food-t-000.html) which hits three lifestyle principals that are especially meaningful to young people: locovore, flash mob and giving back. Great ideas need great promotion and partnering with someone who is already in the space and already “cool”, in this case the crop mobbers” always helps.
Good idea! Maybe for Earthday next year plant dwarf fruit trees, they are shorter and the fruit will happen quicker. On regular fruit trees it may take up to 10 years or more from seedling before they grow fruit.