Although I had originally thought I was going to take this time to talk about my midterm paper and get feed back from some of you as to what your thoughts on the topic I chose were, however, after taking a deeper look into the Lunch Love Community Project, I was so deeply touched with this initiative that my drive to talk about it overtook my desire to talk about the midterm paper. The reason that this ‘open space documentary’ project was so moving to me is that I have worked on a project very similar to this ‘kids eating healthy foods through gardening and learning about where there food comes from’ initiative.
(Still from ‘The Secret Life of Vegetables’)
In Flagstaff, there was a big push to have community gardens throughout various neighborhoods, actively striving to teach members of the community about seasonal gardening, but the schools were also a big breeding ground for instilling the ‘green thumb’ into children at a young age. I worked on a video project entitled “The Secret Life of Vegetables” which addressed the issue of growing in an environment where the soil is not very rich or dense with nutrients necessary for plant development. So we set out to address some of these issues, but along this discovery, we also found out that there was a large push for this type of development and learning environment in the Flagstaff Unified School District as well.
We went to Flagstaff Junior Academy to see how they were teaching youngsters about gardening and healthy eating habits. And to my surprise, the children were absolutely enthralled with their garden in the back of the school lot. Children helped to plant, trim, take care of, and eventually harvest the vegetables and fruit to eat together in class. I cannot stress the importance that this type of hands-on learning will provide for these children’s future. They are able to make healthier decisions for themselves at a young age, and they can also utilize these skills for growing their own food in the future. Being a part of a project like this that captures the beauty of a young mind being sculpted was absolutely profound in its impact on my own view of gardens and how I wished that I would have had the opportunity to learn in this type of environment as a child.
(another still)
Lunch Love Community is a wonderful project that shares this passion about healthy food and aims to teach the future generation of children how to eat healthy and stay healthy. However, how do we take these two models of communities that have actively sought to bring a healthy initiative into the classroom as well as the lunch room and use them to teach the rest of the nation? How do you instill a great sense of worth in ‘gardening and going green’ in classrooms, when the community may not entirely back the idea? Do we need a nationwide change? I believe so. But the question begs, where do we begin??
First off, “The Secret Life of Vegetables” sounds like a very interesting project. What an wonderful experience to document and witness. Personally, I do think we need a nationwide change. But, of course I don’t have the answer of how we make that change. I do think that projects like you documented in Flagstaff and those featured on the Lunch Love Community are a really good start. I guess we have to start small and dream big.
I completely agree with you that these two projects are the beginning stages of the conversations people need to have about the importance of our health and taking daily action (and instilling these ideals at a young age) towards the health and wellness of our bodies. However, It seems that both of these examples have a big push from their community to make these programs and conversations happen. If there were a nationwide push, it would also take a lot of commitment and dedication from each individual community and school district to make a change.