Celebrating a
Productive Year:
Top Five Moments of 2015
The Food and Nutrition Service’s Office of Community Systems
has much to reflect on and be thankful for this season. As we look back at
2015, we see dedicated food service staff, thriving school gardens, and innovative
approaches to bringing healthy, local food to child nutrition programs
around the country. To celebrate, we're sharing our top five favorite moments of the year!
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Establishing a new home for the USDA Farm
to School Program: With the
creation of the Office of Community Food Systems, we’re extending our focus on
local foods beyond the National
School Lunch Program to include the Summer
Food Service Program, Seamless Summer
Option, and Child
and Adult Care Food Program.
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Awarding 74 grant projects: This year we brought the farm
to summer and preschool programs through our grant projects! We were also thrilled by the opportunity to award a
grant to North Dakota, which means over the course of four
years we have reached all 50 states and the Virgin Islands!
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Conducting the Farm to School Census: We learned that 42,173 schools are
bringing the farm to school! And there is more good news to come: we’re gearing
up to report out on the nation’s engagement in farm to school throughout 2016.
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Clarifying local meat procurement:
Who knew there were so many unanswered questions on how to incorporate local
meat into meal programs? You knew! To help you out, we released this resource,
which outlines the food safety requirements for purchasing and serving poultry,
livestock, game, and eggs in child nutrition programs.
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Rounding up four years of accomplishments:
Rather than choose just one year to reflect upon, we documented accomplishments
of our first four years! In case you missed it, be sure to check out our four years
in review report.
From our community to yours, may you have a beautiful
holiday season and a Happy New Year!
We’re Hiring!
Love local food, child nutrition, and traveling in the Midwest?
We have the job for you!
We're looking for a Farm to School Regional Lead
for the Midwest Regional Office based in Chicago, IL.
This is a opportunity to:
- Help implement the USDA Farm to
School Program, including grants, training and technical assistance, and
actively participate in driving the program’s growth and evolution;
- Provide on the ground training, technical assistance, and support to a wide variety of farm to school
stakeholders and be held accountable for increasing the availability of local
foods in schools;
- Play a key role in identifying
training and technical assistance gaps in the farm to school community and fill
those gaps by fine tuning existing resource materials and/or creating new
program offerings; and
- Be a resident expert on key local
and regional procurement issues.
Applications are due December 30.
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Back by Popular Demand: Farm to School Planning
Webinars
Starting in January, we’ll be bringing you an
updated farm to school webinar series titled Planning for Farm to School Success. Through this 11-part series, we’ll guide you through the USDA Farm to School Planning Toolkit. Served up in bite-sized 30 minute
webinars, we’ll offer questions to consider and helpful resources to reference
when starting or growing a farm to school program. Our first two webinars are
listed below, but you can plan ahead for the whole series by visiting our Videos and Webinars
page.
Intro to Farm to School:
Planning and Building a Team: January 14, 1:00 PM EST
How does a farm to school team function? Learn tips and best practices for building
a farm to school team, facing struggles and surprises, and building a
foundation for a successful project.
Setting Goals and Establishing an Evaluation Baseline: January 28, 2:00 PM EST
How do you know if your activities are helping local farmers and improving
student health? Learn how to integrate program planning/evaluation tools and
techniques that will document outcomes and show the impacts of farm to school
programs.
Code for a Cause: #ReformtheForm
Help shape the future of digital design in
government while helping students access healthy school meals! FNS launched the
E.A.T. School Lunch UX Challenge to
develop a prototype electronic application for the school meal programs that
incorporates the best ideas and insights from UX designers, behavioral
scientists, and software developers.
About 100,000 schools and institutions serve more than five billion meals through the National
School Lunch Program and two billion
via the School Breakfast Program to America’s children each school year. FNS’
goal is to develop an electronic application that facilitates accurate
completion and processing in order to reduce improper payments and help ensure
that eligible students have access to free or reduced price meals.
Through March 1, 2016, any U.S. citizen or organization can
submit proposals. A panel of judges will select the winning submissions,
which will be awarded a total of $50,000 in cash prizes. Spread the word to #reformtheform!
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