As you may already be aware, produce from the KLT Victory Garden is being donated to five different organizations around the Seacoast area - Gather Food Pantry in Portsmouth, the North and South Berwick Food Pantries, End 68 Hours of Hunger, and Kittery School Nutrition. All of these organizations do incredible, and incredibly vital work, and we wanted to use this blog to spotlight some of what they do in our communities. Up first is Kittery School Nutrition, located right up the street from the garden at the Shapleigh School in Kittery. Director Wendy Collins has created an innovative program for the Kittery schools which aims to ensure that children are receiving the nutrition they need while also being educated about the importance of nutrition and its relation to other issues. As part of this, Kittery School Nutrition proudly serves nutritious and delicious meals for students for both breakfast and lunch each day, including during this summer vacation. Kittery School Nutrition is not your typical school food program. With a goal to make meals from scratch and reduce the amount of processed foods being consumed by its students, a dedicated team cooks meals on site as much as possible. Additionally, they strive to use the most local produce available. Both of these things became more challenging as a result of health concerns related to COVID-19, while at the same time being more important than ever before as the virus' economic impact resulted in greater food insecurity for many families. Other initiatives pioneered by the program includes tower gardens at each Kittery school used in the winter months for fresh herbs and greens, as well as other gardens from which the harvest goes to each school’s salad bars. During the past school year, they began a Chef to School project that partnered with many talented, award winning chefs and local farmers to teach children more about cooking and nutrition. Farmers visited the schools and talked to the students about where a particular food came from and how it was grown. Chefs visited classes as well and showed students how to cook various healthy, nutritious dishes. Students sampled products and those in Kindergarten through 3rd grade took part in hands on projects with the farmers and chefs. The combination of nutrition and education that Kittery School Nutrition provides the children in our community is both incredibly important and inspiring. When it comes to the KLT Victory Garden, we are absolutely thrilled to be able to contribute to this program, especially since many of our donated seedlings came directly from the schools' gardens. Since the beginning of July, the KLT Victory Garden has been supplying Kittery School Nutrition with cucumbers galore, heirloom and cherry tomatoes, sugar snap peas, and bell peppers - including purple ones! According to Director Wendy Collins, our donation each week “really and truly helps our food expense line.” As a result, the program is able to reorient expenditures toward better packaging and lunch bags, and our donation frees up the funds to cover those costs. Overall, we’re so grateful for how well Kittery School Nutrition takes care of the children in our community, and so glad we can contribute to that work and lighten the load just a little bit.
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AuthorMost of the time, this will be Martina, KLT Garden Coordinator (but keep your eyes peeled for some guest appearances)! I grew up in Portsmouth, love gardening, and am super interested in conservation law and policy. Given how conservation relates to other important needs in our society such as nutrition, poverty alleviation, and education, you can imagine why I am so excited to be working on the KLT Victory Garden! ArchivesCategories |