EDUCATED CHOICES PROGRAM

A healthier and more sustainable world will require thoughtful, critical thinkers. Communities have the tools to solve global problems. The Educated Choices Program is dedicated to inspiring others to realize the importance and responsibility of being informed and to understand the power and influence they wield to make the world a better place through their food choices. In understanding the realities behind these choices and the many benefits of healthy eating, people can make informed and responsible decisions for themselves and other beings.

Our goal at ECP is to make our education programs available worldwide so that all society members are armed with the knowledge of how to improve their personal health and the health of the environment by way of individual food choices. We also aim to support the communities we reach with resources to make positive food choice changes accessible, affordable and culturally appropriate for all of our audiences.

Education is the foundation upon which to build a more sustainable food system. Together, we can create a better world!

As an academic program, ECP offers engaging, interactive, and educational presentations that encourage participation and critical thinking. Using age-appropriate videos, activities and open-ended questions we challenge community members to identify widespread assumptions about human health and the environment and how they relate to their food choices. Presentations topics include Healthful Eating, The Environment and Modern Agriculture, The Ethics of Eating, The Power of Nutrition in Disease Prevention and Cell Based/Plant Based Technologies – The Future of Meat and Dairy.

By providing only current, mainstream research and information about these issues, we give our participants legitimate facts that inform their food choices in a non-judgmental, honest and respectful way. Our goal is for society to learn about and consider food choices that improve their health and that of the planet we all share!

Utilizing the experience and expertise of our leadership team in the fields of education, sustainability, business management, sociology, and health; we are able to design programs that support State academic standards, convey the information in an age-specific relatable manner, and accurately address the effects of food choices on many aspects of our world.

We lean on our team of expert advisors and extensive research to ensure that our educational programs offer the most up-to-date science available and we make changes to our presentations regularly to reflect that. We also perform research studies by way of participant surveys to measure the efficacy of varying messaging styles and techniques and adjust our approaches based on the feedback from the 3rd party analysis team that reviews the data.

Our digital education format allows us to easily offer our programs in multiple languages around the world, removing all geographical boundaries from our work. We also strategically partner with other reputable organizations in the fields of education, health and the environment to ensure the biggest impact and reach possible for all of our collective efforts.

As of April 2022, over 2,300,000 students and community members have viewed our presentations with over 50% of those surveyed making statistically significant reductions/eliminations of unhealthy and unsustainable foods from their diets. By utilizing our Living Lab to experiment with educational content and delivery, we are able to continually improve our presentations to result in improved impact.

An online component of our learning program was launched as part of our COVID response to ensure that we continued to reach as many students as possible during each school year, even when our educators could not safely be in the classrooms. Our leadership team created a virtual experience consisting of professionally narrated versions of our presentations, along with lesson plans offering activities and quizzes for teachers to utilize in their distance learning classrooms. The response was incredibly positive and the digital program has picked up in reach, popularity and effectiveness ever since. This quick pivot resulted in an unexpected future for our organization's education programs.

Over the past two years, we have learned that not only does our digital education format allow us to adapt to the ever changing academic world consisting of home-schooling, in-class instruction and hybrid models; it also removes all geographic borders from our work that were previously in place due to lack of personnel and cost of travel to present in remote areas. On top of this, we have found that we can effectively reach more people in more areas, resulting in more positive dietary changes worldwide for a much lower cost per student! This has paved the way for our global future as an organization.