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Slow Food Portland, Oregon est. 1991 |
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Slow Food in Portland's School and Gardens
Slow Food Portland currently participates and supports Portland Public Schools through four local programs, namely the Portland Public Schools Wellness Advisory Committee, the Garden of Wonders, Growing Gardens’ Youth Grow program, and the Portland Convivium’s own Farmers in Schools program. These four areas differ significantly in that they demonstrate four avenues of change within the school district. The first supports district wide wellness policy design. The second and third programs offer direct programmatic implementation in elementary schools, and the last brings farmers to the classroom to show students where their food comes from and the hands that grow it.
Member coordinator Pat de Garmo sits on the PPS district Wellness Committee. Her presence helps diversify the scope and expectation of the district’s administrative directive by incorporating the importance of teaching children in gardens along with a healthy dose of nutrition education. Go to http://cms9.pps.k12.or.us/.docs/pg/10544 to read convivium chair Katherine Deumling’s testimony to the PPS advisory committee in October of 2005.
The Garden of Wonders at Abernethy Elementary School in Portland Oregon is a wholly integrated food and garden educational experience. It combines an outdoor learning garden, and indoor garden education classroom, and the Abernethy Café where the lunch menu is made from scratch and incorporates produce grown on site. The schools overarching goal is to provide students with an integrated wellness activity and support the Portland Public Schools Wellness Administrative Directive.
The Garden of Wonders serves K-5 students in an urban environment located in the rich agricultural landscape of the north Willamette Valley. It supports the Portland Public School Districts Harvest of the Month project that serves farm fresh and made from scratch local fruits and vegetables to all elementary schools in the district.
The Garden of Wonders is a unique partnership between Abernethy and Portland Public Schools and community partners Slow Food Portland, and Ecotrust /. Through these partnerships, Abernethy and Portland Public Schools Nutrition Services receive media and research support. One of the most significant aspects of the Abernethy pilot project is to institutionalize district wide changes in the school food service environment and create a model program schools can emulate when establishing garden based education as part of their Wellness activities.
http://www.gardenofwonders.org/
http://www.ecotrust.org/farmtoschool
Growing Gardens Youth Grow program provides After-School Garden Club, Summer Garden Camp, and In-School programs to children ages 5-12 at schools and organizations that serve elementary aged children from limited income families. These programs provide hands-on vegetable gardening experiences that include planting seeds, tending worm bins, and tasting fresh fruits and vegetables. Students report “I like to eat beets”, “I ate a tomato the size of my head!”; at least 90% of all students say they want a garden at home after being in Youth Grow. A mother of a Youth Grow student said, “My son who is a picky eater tried the cucumber he harvested in Garden Club and liked it! He also liked the bok choy salad that his class made”. Families of students participating in Youth Grow programs can sign up to receive a free in-ground or container garden at their home and three years of seeds and support through Growing Gardens Home Garden program. This way, a student’s gardening efforts can be supported at home. Growing Gardens helped Kelly Elementary in Portland’s Lents neighborhood start their school garden and is working to help develop the expansion and sustainability of the school and after-school garden program. Teachers get assistance through Youth Grow In-school to tie garden-based learning to their curriculum. Youth Grow lessons support Portland Public School’s new Harvest of the Month program. Youth Grow also offers Parent/Child Gardening Workshops on topics such as Planning a Dinner Garden, Bugs and Insects and Eating from a Garden to further encourage families to grow together.
http://www.growing-gardens.org/
In July 2007, Slow Food Portland created the Farmers in Schools program as a way to bring farmers to elementary schools to show students the hands that grow the food and the seasonal foods that grow in the North Willamette Valley. In 2006, Slow Food Portland received a gift from the Mackenzie River Gathering Foundation and decided the best use of that money is to put it in the classrooms in the form of an easy and sustainable program to support. To sustain the project, Slow Food Portland dedicates a percentage of it’s annual fundraising to continue the project.
Click for another article by Linda just posted on the Culinate website.
For more information contact linda@slowfoodportland.com.
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