Parents & Community

School Food & Procurement

Volunteers may be able to work with your school's nutrition services in a variety of ways to support school food procurement:

• Work with nutrition services to find farms with local products
• Hold taste tests of local foods and outreach in the cafeteria
• Help create a positive cafeteria environment
• Help make signage to highlight local products
• Help create or update a School Wellness Policy to include farm to school
• Explore other city and school district farm to school policy opportunities from the National Farm to School Network

Resource: The FoodCorps Program Guide (based in Oregon) includes a variety of resources that are broadly valuable to food and garden educators outside of FoodCorps programming. In this guide, you will find tips for getting to know your school community, teaching approaches and considerations, best practices in classroom management, tips for cooking with students and for building and maintaining school gardens, activities to engage students in the cafeteria, and best practices for safety during hands-on activities

Education & School Gardens

Classroom volunteers are common in many schools, especially elementary schools. Volunteer to bring food, agriculture, and education activities or themes into students' classrooms, or volunteer and fundraise for the school garden.
 

Promotion and Outreach

Make sure your community knows what farm to school activities are happening at your school and district in the cafeteria, classroom, or school garden. Here's a few ways to be champion for farm to school in your community:

• Communicate with school administrators about the importance of farm to school, a training from the National Farm to School Network
• Talk with your school board about farm to school from ChangeLab Solutions
• Tell your story about farm to school effectively via social media or reach out to newspapers, blogs, TV, and radio.