Garden Classrooms

Gourmet  Garden Mission: Linking nutrition education, activity, and food through a school garden.
The mission of the garden is to create and sustain an organic garden and landscape that is wholly integrated into the foods and nutrition classes and in the future the school’s curriculum, culture, and food program.

The purpose of the Vincent Academy Garden and Nutrition program is to introduce students to the joys of gardening and to develop healthy eating habits and awareness at an early age. West Oakland is considered a food desert and most families do not have access to affordable, healthy produce within the community. Therefore, many nutrition-related health problems plague community members of all ages. Obesity, heart disease, and Type 2 diabetes are common conditions for poor families living in this community.

The Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona has three programs that help with school garden programs were we: install school and organization community gardens, host a train the trainer program to create leaders and change makers in low-income schools and communities to address hunger, health and community development. We envision communities and schools in Southern Arizona as places full of life, where gardens grow an abundance of food and leadership. Where students learn by getting their hands dirty to create clean healthy communities.

The program at the Graham Elementary school in Mount Vernon, NY is a garden based education program. The mission is to reconnect students to natural systems and to ritualize that connection; to bring about critical awareness in students of the disparate conditions society exists and inspire them to action - bring about change within themselves and the communities they are in. The student population is predominantly, black – African American, African and Caribbean.