The Kindergarten Initiative

    It is well documented that children are not getting the food they need to grow up healthy and strong, and the health implications of poor nutrition are life-changing—obesity, diabetes, heart disease, and even some forms of cancer. Less than 20% of school-age children consume the recommended five daily servings of fruits and vegetables, and over a third of teenagers consume more than three servings of soda every day. Further, children who do not have a healthy diet do not learn well in school.

     The Kindergarten Initiative was launched in 2003 to improve children’s eating habits from a young age. Its goals are to increase the consumption of nutritious food and to increase student and parent awareness of locally grown food. In the past four years, the Foundation has awarded $1.2 million to The Food Trust, a Philadelphia non-profit (www.thefoodtrust.org), to design and implement this program.

     The initiative has developed a model program of local food and nutrition education that can be easily incorporated into any curriculum used in classrooms today. Working with teachers and students in the classroom, the Kindergarten Initiative is designed to integrate nutrition concepts into the regular school curriculum as well as provide healthy fruit and vegetable snacks grown by local farmers. The program was planned with the understanding that schools alone cannot change the eating habits of young children; therefore, ongoing communication with parents/caretakers, events for them which incorporate cooking and nutrition, and resources to help them plan nutritious meals all serve to reinforce the work done with students in the classroom.

     Last year, the program operated in 11 schools, reaching 32 classroom teachers and 940 children. Surveys from the pilot year and the first year of the expanded program demonstrate its effectiveness:

• More than 90% of the kindergarten initiative parents reported that they had changed the way they shop for, prepare, or talk to their children about food
• More than 80% of parents reported increased awareness around providing healthier snack options for their children
• 97% of the parents believed that buying locally grown food is important and bought some 1000 lbs of produce at two school farm store events
• Kindergarten initiative teachers taught 30% more hours than the program’s goal of 50 for the year and, rather than feeling it an imposition, found the training “most helpful”
• Participating students’ knowledge about healthy food, ideal number of daily servings, and sources of food was increased significantly and was much stronger than a control group of peers
• Participating students’ consumption of fruits and vegetables increased as a result of the program and exceeded the consumption of the peer control group.

     Based on this success, The Healthy Farms/Healthy Schools Act was introduced, passed and signed by Governor Rendell in November 2006, directing the Dept. of Agriculture to establish a statewide program modeled on the Claneil initiative. Anyone who is interested in finding out how to take advantage of this can contact The Food Trust or the PA. Dept. of Agriculture.