FRESHFARM FoodPrints Program

What is FoodPrints?

FoodPrints is FRESHFARM Market’s food education program that aims to make positive changes in what children and their families eat through highly engaging, hands-on experiences with growing, harvesting, cooking and eating nutritious, local foods in season.   We work in partnership with administrators and teachers to ensure that FoodPrints is a relevant, enriching program that teaches Common Core, Next Generation Science and DCPS/OSSE Health standards, and that adapts to the unique curricular goals of each school we partner with.

FoodPrints Goals:

• support local farmers/farmland/agriculture through educating young eaters who will grow up to make highly informed decisions about how they choose to spend their food dollars;
• increase academic engagement through hands-on experiences at school with gardening, harvesting, cooking and eating - and a companion curriculum that uses these experiences to bring environmental literacy, along with the life science, social studies, math, and language arts standards of learning, to life;
• improve long-term health outcomes for youth by educating eaters who are familiar and comfortable with fresh, seasonal, vegetables, fruits, whole grains and legumes. Our program also seeks to improve health outcomes for families by sending home letters detailing student FoodPrints experiences at schools and including recipes so families can prepare these nutritious foods together at home;
• increase parent engagement with our partner schools by offering fun, low-barrier opportunities to volunteer as “chaperones” during in-school field trips.