Cultivate Charlottesville engages youth and community in building an equitable, sustainable food system through garden-based learning, food access, and community leadership. Through our program City Schoolyard Gardens we reach more than 3,000 students annually in 6 schoolyard gardens where we provide hands-on experiential learning, distribute more than 20,000 'Harvest of the Month' healthy snacks across the school system program and our paid Food Justice Internship trains future leaders.
1 in 6 households face food insecurity in Charlottesville. The historic inequities in our city paired with a high cost of living, leave many with their basic needs unmet. Young people are our future leaders and many are disconnected from where their food comes from and the importance of healthy eating. Youth are targeted relentlessly with advertising for unhealthy products. Young people feel hopeless in their ability to change these dynamics around food access and health inequities.
Cultivate provides spaces where youth can connect with the earth and learn about where their food comes from with hands-on learning. Our RootEd Fram provides curriculum that meets State Standards of Learning objectives. Harvest of the Month snacks allows students to taste the delicious possibilities for eating fresh and seasonal produce from the gardens. Our Food Justice Internship trains youth to become changemakers in their community and builds confidence to impact the local food system.
City Schoolyard Gardens works with over 3,000 students each year to learn where their food comes from and increase their access to healthy foods. Our youth-based programs connect young people and their families into larger system changes through our Urban Agriculture Collective and Food Justice Network programs. We create a K-12 leadership pipeline the feeds into a healthier food system via community gardens and policy advocacy.
This project has provided additional documentation in a PDF file (projdoc.pdf).
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