California Food for California Kids: Promoting California Grown Fruits and Vegetables in Summer Meals
The Center for
Ecoliteracy has created a multi-channel marketing campaign to increase the
demand for California specialty crops in summer meals prepared by 25 school
districts in Sacramento, Contra Costa, and San Diego counties. The campaign,
which will run in public transit shelters and buses, features fresh California
fruits and vegetables, including avocado, carrot, cucumber, grapes, melon,
peaches, strawberry, and tomato. The goal is to reach parents whose
children eat school meals during the school year and, in one click, provide
them with the location of a convenient summer meals site, summermeals.org. The ads emphasize that the meals are
“no cost” and require “no paperwork.” A 30-second radio spot will air on
Spanish language networks in Northern and Southern California. Additionally,
the ads will run on Facebook and Yahoo. The Center for Ecoliteracy will also
assist the school districts with marketing summer meals made with fresh
California fruits and vegetables to parents directly, and with generating media
coverage of the program and special summer meals kick-off events.
The Center for Ecoliteracy received funding for this
project as part of the Specialty Crop Block Grant Program, in which the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service has over $60 million
in grant funds. The purpose of this grant is to increase the competitiveness of
specialty crops such as fruits, vegetables, tree nuts, dried fruits,
horticulture, and nursery crops.
Webinars and Funding Opportunities
 Measuring Impact
Date: TODAY! June 6, 2017 @ 1:00pm PST
Hear how and why School Garden Support Organizations across the
nation measure the impact of school garden programming. A wide range of
assessment tools and strategies from different organizations will be shared.
Hosted by: Robyn Burns,
Program Director, CitySprouts
With Meg Hiesinger, The Ecology Center; Suzannah Holsenbeck, Common Ground -
High School, Urban Farm and Environmental Education Center; May Tsupros,
Gardeneers
Register now!
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 Garden to Cafeteria
This webinar by the Whole Kids Foundation launches their Garden to
Cafeteria Toolkit. The toolkit shares examples of some of the most successful
garden to cafeteria programs in the U.S. and provides tools for implementing
best practices in your school district. The webinar also shares how districts
can apply to receive on-site training from the Slow Food USA National School
Garden Program for garden to cafeteria programs.
Recording available!
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 Funding to Support Summer and
Afterschool Nutrition Programs
One in six children do not know where their next meal is coming from. Child
hunger is a national crisis and you can help by partnering with a YMCA to be
part of the Y's Year-Round Food Program. Encourage your Y partners to learn
more about grant opportunities to support their efforts to empower youth to
their full potential through the Summer and Afterschool Nutrition Programs.
The deadline for applying is June 22, 2017.
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 Promoting Your Summer Food Service Program
School is almost out and now is the time to finalize your plans for summer feeding. Do you need resources to promote your summer feeding program? The Summer Food Service Program (SFSP) has all types of resources including flyers, recipes, placemats, posters, and activity guides for family. All resources are in English and Spanish and can be downloaded for free from the SFSP website. Can't print copies? You can order print materials by completing the Resource Order Form (allow 2-4 weeks for delivery).
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Grantee Spotlight
The Wallace Center: Farm to School Food Safety Training
 Food safety is often viewed as a barrier to bringing more locally and regionally produced foods into schools. The Wallace Center, part of the Agriculture and Enterprise group at Winrock International, is meeting that challenge by using the USDA Farm to School Grant program to take the conversation about food safety straight to the front lines – the farmers themselves.
The Wallace Center project focuses on the development of a practical food safety curriculum in five trainings across the south. Developed in collaboration with members of the National Sustainable Agriculture Coalition in Washington, D.C., and La Montañita Cooperative in Albuquerque, New Mexico, Wallace Center’s “tiered food safety methodology” offers an adaptive and culturally relevant strategy for engaging growers. To cultivate a true culture of food safety requires understanding and buy-in from participating farmers, and Wallace and their partners are working with a diverse array of producers to promote food safety not as a required box to check off a list, but as a route to new market access and social impact.
Like many successful farm to school projects, the Wallace Center’s work was built on successful partnerships — collaborating with cooperative extension services, state departments of agriculture, Farm to School Network state leads, and community-based nonprofits in Mississippi, Arkansas, and Georgia.
The Wallace Center's food safety trainings, supported by funds from the USDA Farm to School Grant program, focuses on providing introductory level information about the Food Safety Modernization Act, risk analysis, Good Agricultural Practices, and how to develop standard operating procedures to support food safety throughout production. “Our training focuses on the positive” says Wallace Center Director John Fisk. “It reverses the negative reactions to external food safety expectations, and positions food safety as a way to keep promises to customers, which is good for business.”
At the heart of Wallace’s work is a focus on making food safety education relevant, practical, and culturally accessible for all growers. Calvin Head, Director of the Mileston Farmers’ Cooperative in Tchula, Mississippi says that effective education needs to “let farmers be farmers” and create a space to discuss what is and isn’t working within the community. These conversations help growers “understand the procedures of implementing farm food safety, appreciate the financial consequences of not complying with food safety standards, and demonstrate the new markets and new possibilities that [food safety certification] is opening up.”
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