Healthy Chefs! Cook/teach at low-income schools/communities in food deserts

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About Seeds in the Middle

Location:

153 Warren Street, BROOKLYN, NY 11201, US

Mission Statement

Seeds in the Middle partners with students, educators, parents & their communities to access all opportunities, beginning with improving health, enhancing arts education and greening their environment. We empower and educate all to get healthy and scale educational and social disparities. Our pilot schools are in central Brooklyn, a neighborhood with among the city’s highest obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates. We teach how to grow, market, cook, access and prepare fresh food, how to exercise & engage in the arts, all the elements needed to promote life-changing lifelong health. Our volunteers come from all walks of life. We cross cultures. We transform gray into green, destitution into inspiration.

Description

Seeds in the Middle offers joyful, healthy interventions that nurture the whole child and address the multiple obstacles blocking low-income children and families from getting healthy. We teach how to grow edible gardens, run a student-led Hip2B Healthy Market, bring chefs into schools, started soccer, running and fitness programs at school and in the community and music and arts in the schools. We integrate professional development for teachers so that a healthy lifestyle and environmental stewardship becomes organic and sustainable in the school community. To build community, we created Soccer for Harmony tournaments and the Crown Heights Farmers Market. In two years, we have engaged more than 1,000 families, and students and teachers report changing their habits to include more fruits and vegetables, and fitness. This is a pilot for any school and Seeds in the Middle plans to replicate.