Food Corps

Back in March, at a school in Traverse City, I spent an afternoon with two very intelligent, and enthusiastic young women, who are members of  FoodCorps.  Meghan and Lianna spent the class time helping the kids with hands on projects that looked at where our food comes from.

It was fun watching the kids decide what a “Burger” timeline looked like… does the bun come from the soil? Well, actually, yes!

Carrie Stone wrote the full article for the latest edition on Edible Grande Traverse Magazine.

She was there earlier in the day and it sounds like it was also fun!

Do you have FoodCorps in your community?  I’d love to hear about other groups too.

“…During a five-minute discussion 16 small bodies sit on a rug together—interested and engaged—as FoodCorps member Lianna Bowman introduces them to varieties like Bulls Blood beets, Atomic Red carrots and Strawberry popcorn.

They’ll make their own seed catalogs this day, with funny names and drawings. Laughter erupts when they see Bowman’s drawing of a bean with big eyes in her sample catalog. Fifteen minutes later a white-blonde haired boy announces his catalog’s name:

Mr. Phillip’s Super Cool Seeds, with blue carrots as his first entry.

Starting at the seed level is what their work is about. The analogy is deep: Young people planting seeds of knowledge in human seedlings. It’s the foundation of FoodCorps work.

“Starting the exposure at young ages—not only to positively affect their health, but to increase knowledge generationally—will help set policy, and make wide changes in healthcare, food systems and edible in the schools Photos by Tracy Grant O our attitudes nationally,” says FoodCorps co-founder and communications director Jerusha Klemperer. Impacting the curriculum, the teachers, the food service staff and, most importantly, the students are what gets Bowman excited.

She comfortably sits in the teacher’s lounge interacting with the staff as one of them, and pulls out of her shirt a cranberry bean seed with tiny roots in a small plastic bag that has germinated by her body temperature. Her kind eyes light up and her big smile widens.

A teacher across the table chimes in that her students loved that project. For Bowman, the most inspirational aspect of serving Northern Michigan communities as a FoodCorps member is teachers who value the Farm to School programs.

The active groups in our region are unusual compared to other areas. “The support here for local food and growing food is amazing,” she says. FoodCorps members have to fight to get time in the classrooms in other regions,” she adds, “but here teachers want to include our ideas into their classrooms. …”