Living in California now, its great that we can find so many great local produce. We are lucky to live in such a mild climate that growing fruits here is fairly easy. It’s the reason California supplies so much of the produce to the country and some to the world. Its always fun to eat something and turn to the back and see it was made somewhere near us.
Moving has been a change but its also been a very positive one. Now that Brooklin is in kindergarten, we are becoming even more involved and aware of different initiatives and programs happening in California schools and on the national level. We pack our kids lunch and sometimes rely on school lunch, so making sure we know what they are feeding is important.
Being from Oregon, I have always been brought up with a sense of nature and the importance that us humans rely on it. We need it for our clean air, water, and of course food. The Center for Ecoliteracy and barrettSF agency developed a campaign to show appreciation for schools that are serving and sharing meals that are freshly prepared using California-grown food.
Last October, the program called California Thursdays started with 15 districts and was so successful they are starting the second phase rollout. Next Thursday now includes 42 districts from around California and will serve combined totals of more than 250 million school meals a year. These will offer students a healthy, freshly prepared meal made with California-grown food.
This program “Share the Love” was created in to not just provide feedback, especially of the negative type, but to promote and support the efforts of schools and the administrators implementing these steps to give all of our kids fresh and local foods.
California Thursdays was created as by the Center for Ecoliteracy and school districts who want to participate. Participation is simple and beneficial with cooperation of school districts to serve healthy, freshly prepared school meals made from California-grown foods.
Check out this video on a little more of what California Thursdays new “Share the Love” CTA is about.
California Thursdays™ from Center for Ecoliteracy on Vimeo.
Its simple, create your own postcard-style email and send it to your school district’s Superintendent, Food Service Director, or both. There are 10 different messages along with 7 separate themes for that custom touch. Your “Share the Love” email is sent based on the zip code you select, only for California school districts.
Tell your school something positive and lets inspire more to take part in support all the great food that our great state of California has to offer. Let gets better inspirational food recipes and choices that will help introduce our kids and all kids to the great foods of California.
Check out www.californiathursdays.org to see if your school is involved or to find out more about how you can get your school involved.
“The Center for Ecoliteracy is a nonprofit that advances ecological education in K–12 schools and works at local, statewide, and national levels of scale.Founded in 1995, the Center creates and publishes books and resources, facilitates conferences and professional development, and provides strategic consulting for public, private, and nonprofit organizations. A leader in K–12 school food reform and school gardens for nearly two decades, the Center was an early recipient of a USDA Community Food Projects grant for the Food Systems Project (named among the program’s “top ten” projects), and developed the Rethinking School Lunch planning framework used by school districts across the nation.”
This is a partnered post to share this great program that is helping introduce kids to fresh and local foods.