Olivewood Gardens and Learning Center

Through three specific programs, Olivewood is looking to accomplish the goal of providing education and access to healthy choices to residents of National City and south bay communities.

Children’s Garden and Nutrition Education Program is designed to teach kids where their food comes from, how to make healthy choices, and to appreciate the outdoors. Students rotate through hands-on science, gardening, and nutrition lessons tied directly to Common Core Curriculum and Next Generation Science Standards. We are creating adventurous eaters, engaged environmental stewards, and inquisitive young leaders.

Our parent nutrition education program is teaching parents how to make healthy changes at home that will improve their families’ short and long-term health outcomes. Cooking for Salud is a behavior modification program that gives families tools to change their cooking and eating habits, as well as transform the way they view food and health. This seven-week program teaches participants healthy techniques for preparing fruits, vegetables, whole grains, proteins, and fats; while providing a safe and welcoming environment where they can share and grow within a cohort. Following completion of the program , graduates become 'kitchenistas' and continue to develop leadership skills and advocate for healthy food access and nutrition education throughout National City.

Through our 14-week high school volunteer and internship program, we teach valuable job training and leadership skills.

We use a wraparound approach to meet the needs of the community, including parent education, school field trips, family programs, and teacher training. We empower graduates of our 7-week Cooking for Salud program to provide peer-to-peer education to reinforce critical nutrition education.

We partner with the local National School District to provide an intensive field trip program for students at four schools with the ultimate goal that we will bring students from all ten schools in the district to our Gardens multiple times each year. We highlight age-appropriate, easy, wholesome recipes that feature seasonal produce and lessons are tied directly to the CA State Common Core Curriculum and Next Generation Science Standards. Students are immersed in experiential science curriculum that connects environmental health and personal health and they see the relationship between protecting the earth and nutrition.

The Program incorporates these strategies:
- Multiple visits - Children visit the gardens multiple times each year and see the garden in different seasons, reinforcing lessons with repeated practice of observation, inquiry, gardening, and cooking.
- Hands-on activities – Students and their parents participate in experiential gardening classes, hands-on science lessons, and kitchen classes where they learn about nutrition while preparing and sharing healthy meals.
- The entire nutrient cycle – Students rotate through standards-based Science, Gardening, and Kitchen activities that connect nature with food and food with health.

We also provide a wrap-around approach, meaning our Cooking for Salud graduates, also known as 'kitcheinistas' go into the schools and lead parent presentations to reinforce skills and behaviors that students are learning at the garden. Parents have access to healthy recipes and get to meet other parents who have made healthy choices.

Cooking for Salud is a bilingual English and Spanish parent nutrition education, behavior modification program designed to teach parents how to make healthy changes at home that will improve their families’ short and long-term health outcomes. Cooking for Salud gives participants tools to change their cooking and eating habits, with guest chef volunteers and instruction centered around food and nutrition. Participation in this program requires a 7-week commitment. We ask that all participants attend every class, once a week for 3 hours. All program participants will also be asked to complete questionnaires about demographics, family history, and eating habits. Additional biometrics around health may be conducted in order for our organization to gather statistical data on the lasting impact of our program. When participants graduate, they become Kitchenistas and continue to be involved in a community of support that has the mission of expanding and sharing knowledge about healthy living.

Currently, we serve 1637 kids through our children's field trip each year, and we serve all fourth-graders from four National School District schools. We host three sessions of Cooking for Salud, our 7-week adult education class, and we host two 14-week high school Urban Agriculture internship. We also work with an additional 98 high school students annually through garden education and volunteer activities.

Over the eight years of our programs, we have served almost 10,000 students and had over 75,000 visits to Olivewood Gardens. We've seen results in how people think about food and their health. We currently have a waiting list of 200 adults to join our Cooking for Salud program and have multiple families returning annually for additional programming.

We hear from participants from our Cooking for Salud program​ who are taking less or no medicine for health issues as they were before the class and past participants who attend our program as volunteers so they can keep learning. With 200 kitchenistas, many of them meet monthly to share recipes, successes and challenges and to help build a healthier community. The kitcheninstas present healthy food demonstrations in the community and at all 10 local elementary schools to educate parents in regards to health and wellness. They have also formed a wellness coalition to work in partnership with the school district wellness committee.