CCFC’s mission is to support parents’ efforts to raise healthy families by limiting commercial access to children and ending the exploitive practice of child-targeted marketing. In working for the rights of children to grow up—and the freedom of parents to raise them—without being undermined by corporate interests, CCFC promotes a more democratic and sustainable world. CCFC campaigns against marketing junk food to children.
Community Food Advocates (CFA) is a nonprofit comprised of farmers, students, persons of faith, community gardeners, and health advocates with a mission to end hunger and create a healthy, just, and sustainable food system for all Tennesseans. CFA’s Growing Healthy Kids (GHK) program brings together parents, students, and community members to improve access to healthy foods in public schools.
The Environmental Working Group is the nation’s most effective environmental health research and advocacy organization. Our mission is to conduct original, game-changing research that inspires people, businesses and governments to take action to protect human health and the environment. Food is one of EWG’s four areas of focus.
Anna Lappe and her team of Food Mythbusters do online education around food and have worked to shut down McDonald’s Happy Meal campaign.
An award winning nonprofit that serves the Boston area, Fresh Truck is a mobile, healthy market providing fresh produce, whole grains, and other healthy foods for Boston neighborhoods. They’ve sold over 340,000 pounds of food and fed over 23,142 mouths. Fresh Truck partners with local health centers, schools, and other community organizations. The Fresh Truck supports education programs around nutrition, cooking, and urban agriculture.
The Vetri Foundation implements family-style meals in schools. The organization runs Eatiquette, a school lunch program offered in certain Philadelphia schools that improves the quality of the food. They equate healthy eating with healthy living and utilize food, education, and social interaction to positively influence children. They have served over 260,000 healthy, family-style meals. The foundation’s website provides case studies of their program as well as kid-friendly recipes.
A nonprofit focused on ecoliteracy in schools. Some of their work is tied to food as part of ecoliteracy. Of particular importance is one of their publications, “Making the Case for Healthy, Freshly Prepared School Meals”. These materials include an adaptable PowerPoint presentation and demonstrate the potential impact of improving the quality of school meals.
Based in Santa Fe, Cooking with Kids focuses on delivering positive experiences with healthy foods to children. CWK developed an experiential food and nutrition education curriculum that satisfies Common Core State Standards and National Health Education Standards. In New Mexico, CWK works with 5000 students in 13 schools. The Cooking with Kids curriculum can be purchased. CWK also provides free educational resources for download.
National Food Day is celebrated on October 24th, but it is also a celebration of food and a movement for food literacy and a healthy, sustainable, affordable and fair food system. Food Day was started by the Center for Science in the Public Interest in 2011. For more information, visit the Food Day website:
www.foodday.org/foodeducation
Includes curriculum tools for Food Day and beyond.
www.foodday.org/resources
Resources for organizing Food Day events and teaching about food at your school.
A national nonprofit working to improve public policies and public-private partnerships to eradicate hunger and undernutrition in the United States. FRAC works with hundreds of national, state and local nonprofit organizations, public agencies, corporations and labor organizations to address hunger, food insecurity, and their root cause, poverty.
Focused on Santa Barbara County in California, the Orfalea Foundation has a School Food Initiative that works directly with school stakeholders to promote made-from-scratch cooking. The School Food Initiative has several projects: a culinary boot camp for food service staff, a farm-to-school program, Jr. Chef Day child cooking events, food education performances, strategic funding of schools and community groups, and support of school gardens.
CSPI is a consumer advocacy organization whose twin missions are (1) to conduct innovative research and advocacy programs in health and nutrition, and (2) to provide consumers with current, useful information about their health and well-being. The organization works extensively on food issues, especially on nutrition, food safety, and education. CSPI founded the Food Day Campaign.
Edible Schoolyard is Alice Waters’ groundbreaking initiative to educate and provide technical support around food education, with emphasis on school gardens.
An after school program at two Seattle high schools that teaches students healthy and delicious cooking, as well as about the impact of food on individuals and communities.
A member of the AmeriCorps Service Network, FoodCorps places emerging leaders into schools to perform food education and improve food literacy. FoodCorps currently has 125 service members at 108 sites in 15 states. They partner with state non-profit organizations and university centers to coordinate their work at the state level. Since September 1, 2013, FoodCorps programs have impacted 74,582 children, run 189 garden projects producing 23,630 pounds of garden produce that is donated, and touched 2,403 new community volunteers. FoodCorps measures changes in attitudes, changes in schools, and changes at home to accurately gauge the program’s impact.
School Food FOCUS (Food Options for Children in Urban Schools) is a national collaborative that attempts to utilize the knowledge and procurement power of large urban school districts to improve the quality of meals nationwide. They seek to make meals more healthful, regionally sourced, and sustainably produced. The major areas they work in are policy advocacy, procurement change, and peer-to-peer learning. Of special interest is their School Food Learning Lab, which is a case study of how Saint Paul Public School districts altered their procurement policy to improve the healthfulness of the food served.