Think&EatGreen@School

Think&EatGreen@School is Community University Research Alliance funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.  It is dynamic project that implements healthy and sustainable school food systems within the learning communities of the Vancouver School Board.  VCH has been a partner since the initial visioning meetings in 2008-09 and has been a partner in implementing the projects, policy discussions and research agenda since funding was awarded in 2010.

For a second year, Think&EatGreen@School set aside $20,000 from their grant to support school initiated healthy and sustainable food initiatives in Vancouver.  Schools applied for up to $2,000 each to help with starting, expanding, or improving school projects in the areas of growing, preparing, tasting, and composting food.  These projects model integration of food skills and food learning with other curricular objectives, like math, social studies, language arts, and chemistry.  (Even physics has been taught in the food garden!)

In 2012-13, these small grants allowed for 13 Elementary and 3 Secondary schools to engage their students in hands on food skills education.  These hands-on activities lead to children and youth asking for, tasting, and devouring healthy foods, with no nagging required (a nutritionist’s dream!) 

Go to www.thinkeatgreen.ca to subscribe to the monthly newsletter, read about preliminary research results and hear about the call out for 2013-14 mini-grants in late-September.