Kitchen Classrooms

In 2007, USF professors Melinda Stone and Seth Wachtel and eleven students enrolled in the year-long Garden Project living learning community transformed an overgrown lot into a campus organic garden. Over the next four years, Garden Project students and faculty installed irrigation and water catchment systems, planted an orchard, painted garden murals, and designed and built an outdoor kitchen, greenhouse, toolshed, and a solar power system. In 2011, responding to overwhelming amount of student interest, the professors transitioned the Garden Project into a minor in Urban Agriculture.

The Mother Lode Farm To School Network strives to create a region where all schools teach about and provide access to healthy, locally grown food, creating future generations of healthy children and economically vibrant farms. We serve public schools in the Central Sierra Region and partner with FoodCorps California to focus our efforts on establishing community lead garden and farm to school programs in Title 1 schools. We value justice, health, education, and communities.

Advancing literacy by providing the opportunity to experiment with new foods, new skills, and new ideas. 

The Free Library of Philadelphia understands that literacy is not a “one size fits all” experience. Opening in June 2014, the Culinary Literacy Center (CLC) is revolutionizing the way Philadelphians think about food, nutrition and literacy. People become literate through multiple different pathways—and food is one pathway we all have in common.

Established in 2014 by a group of committed students, teachers, parents, and community leaders, the Willow Creek Academy Culinary Farm’s mission is to create an engaging, systematic and sustainable outdoor education program in the fields of cooking, gardening and nutrition that deepens the understanding of core knowledge and nurtures a lifelong connection between mind, body, spirit and the environment.