Last month the Headwaters Food & Farming Alliance (HFFA) was awarded a First Place Category Champion prize worth $5,000 from CST Inspiring Minds Learning Project at Primrose Elementary School in Mulmur.
HFFA submitted Idea #311, “If we nourish, kids will flourish”, for the CST funding program and was selected as Category Champion in the Health and Wellbeing category.
The grant will support the organization’s Farm to School Pilot Programs in Dufferin County, Caledon and Erin, which have proven to be quite successful and engaging.
The F2S program includes educational workshops for kindergarten-grade 6 students, where local farmers visit classrooms and take students through various hands-on activities related to food and farming. They have also implemented a Local Food Club, where school families and staff can purchase memberships and receive monthly packages containing local food samples, feature recipes, tips for cooking with kids, information on food handling, and contacts for the farms and producers who supplied the food – a real effort in connecting consumers and their farmers. The pilot programs run until the end of December 2015.
A cheque was presented at Primrose, one of the program’s first pilot schools, on January 15th. CST Branch Manager Cheryl Lynch (back row second from right in the above photo) presented the cheque to HFFA Program Coordinator Jennifer Payne (back row third from left), amid participating farmers, teachers and students at Primrose Elementary School.
Be sure to visit the Ontario Edible Education Network’s recent profile with the Headwaters Food & Farming Alliance, where they dig up further details on the flourishing F2S program with Jennifer Payne, including information on how the program began.
The Golden Horseshoe Food and Farming Alliance would like to send a big congratulations to the Headwaters Food & Farming Alliance for bringing the farm (and farmer) to school throughout the Headwaters Region, and for planting the seeds for interactive, nutritious learning among today’s students. When local food education prevails, we all win.