Roanoke City Public Schools, LEAP and Virginia Cooperative Extension will gather at James Madison Middle School’s school garden to celebrate their hard work for a USDA Farm to School planning grant.
On Tuesday, June 28, Roanoke City Public Schools (RCPS), Local Environmental Agriculture Project (LEAP), and Virginia Cooperative Extension (VCE) will gather at James Madison Middle School’s school garden to celebrate the resources created, the relationships established, and the groundwork laid for future growth from a USDA Farm to School planning grant.
The event will begin at 9:15 a.m. with a presentation from Farm to School partnership leaders, which will include a description of the work accomplished since the grant’s inception in July 2020. Following the presentation, activity stations hosted by a wide range of community partners will be available to the media. From 10 to 10:30 a.m., students participating in RCPS’s Fifth Quarter, RCPS+, will begin cycling through the hands-on activities. At 10:30, the public portion of the event will end.
Throughout the day, RCPS+ students will continue to learn about healthy eating, local food, composting, clean water, and gardening. The Farm to School educational activities will touch on the disciplines of health and nutrition, gardening and local food systems, and composting and food waste. The activities will be led by school and community partners such as: LEAP, RCPS Food & Nutrition Services, the VCE-led Roanoke Master Gardener Association, The Harvest Collective, Carilion Community Health and Outreach, and RCPS’s Roanoke Technical Education Center.
“This is a great opportunity for Farm to School stakeholders and the wider community to see what Farm to School programs can look like in action,” says LEAP Director of Regional Partnerships Maureen McGonagle.
On July 1, 2020, LEAP and VCE received a United States Department of Agriculture Farm to School planning grant in partnership with RCPS to fund relationship building and action planning for Farm to School programming within Roanoke City. Despite the challenges of launching this effort during the COVID-19 pandemic, the partnership has created resources and laid the groundwork for future Farm to School programming in RCPS. Over the course of the planning grant period, LEAP and VCE have created a new farm to school website (https://sites.google.com/vt.edu/farmtoschool/home?authuser=0), and provided Harvest of the Month lesson plans and videos to serve educators and students. An 18-member Farm to School advisory committee has convened regularly over the course of the grant period. Gardens have been built at Hurt Park Elementary School, and Lucy Addison Middle School, and more than 12 Farm to School events have been held.
For more information about the Farm to School event, USDA planning grant, or LEAP, contact Maureen McGonagle at mo@leapforlocalfood.org.
About LEAP:
Local Environmental Agriculture Project (LEAP) is a Roanoke-based 501c3 nonprofit. Founded in 2009, LEAP’s mission is to nurture healthy communities and resilient local food systems. LEAP programs include: two farmers markets, a mobile market, an online marketplace, a farm share, a food hub, a commercial kitchen, four community gardens, and robust nutrition incentive programs. LEAP also works with community partners from across the region on initiatives that promote farm to community and food system development. LEAP is the lead organization for Virginia Fresh Match, a statewide network of markets and retail outlets that make fruits and vegetables more affordable for SNAP participants.
About VCE:
Virginia Cooperative Extension is an educational outreach partnership between Virginia Tech and Virginia State University whose mission is to deliver education in agriculture and natural resources, family and consumer sciences, community viability, and 4-H youth development in order to provide solutions to problems facing Virginians. The Family Nutrition Program’s role in this mission is to teach limited-resource families and youth how to make healthy food choices and become good managers of available food resources for optimal health and growth. Funded by the USDA’s Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program – Education (SNAP-Ed) and Expanded Food and Nutrition Education Program (EFNEP), their programs focus on basic nutrition, physical activity, safe food handling, and thrifty food shopping. To learn more about the Family Nutrition Program visit their website, www.eatsmartmovemoreva.org.
