Growing Well with Mercy school garden program

The Growing Well with Mercy program is focused on community collaboration in order to fostes healthy lifestyles in our communities.This program is a natural outgrowth of our successful ten year Mercy Goes to school program teaching nutrition and germ preventon classes to local elementary schools in our hospital service area. We currently have partnerships with Folsom-Cordova, Buckeye and Rescue Union school Districts. In response to requests from the school nurses regarding the current obesity epidemic, we introduced our Growing Well with Mercy school garden program in Ocrtober 2010 and now have five school gardens in five schools and are planning many more. We have found in our research that obesity is not  always socio-eonomic or demographically sensitive.

Our gardens are located in schools that are Title 1 designated as well as more affluent areas. Our strategy and mission is to engage as many ini the community as possible through collaboration. We have so far engaged Whole Foods, Nugget Market, Home Depot, Lowes, local Rotary clubs and Chambers, local Garden Clubs, UC Master Gardeners, local government and cities, elected officials, Waste Connections - who also provides composting and recycling classes for our students. In this way we are able to engage the school staff, parents, but the volunteers and business community at large so that we can touch as many in the community as possible. We are continuing to build strong relationships and partnerships in the region for our program and read with great interest your interest in coming to the Sacramento area.

We have been recognized by the California State Assembly by assemblymember Alyson Huber in our committment to the health and well being of our children and communities.

This year, we have added on important training classes on Nutrition for the teachers, staff, parents, and garden volunteers in order to provide them with lessons and curriculum (mapped to CA. State standards), and ideas for making the gardens a "living classroom."

We have been following the Edible Schoolyard program for many years and read with great interest that you will be designating some schools here for the program. We welcome the opportunity to meet with you or the Greenwise organization in order to tell you more about our exciting program and the results that we are seeing.

Please go to our website www.mercyfolsom.org for more information. We have additional collateral and story boards talking about the program and links to our recent coverage in the Sacramento Bee and other lcoal newspapers and magazines.