THE EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD PROJECT
Programs and results
What we aim to solve
Our programs
What are the organization's current programs, how do they measure success, and who do the programs serve?
The Edible Schoolyard Berkeley
The Edible Schoolyard is a one-acre garden and kitchen classroom at Martin Luther King, Jr. Middle School, a public school in Berkeley, California. The Edible Schoolyard's garden and kitchen classes are not electives, each of the school's 850 students (ages 11 to 14) attends classes in the garden and kitchen. Garden classes address issues of seasonality, plant life cycles, the origins of food, community values, and the pleasures of work. Students apply their skills in the garden to classroom lessons, reinforcing standards-based education about earth science, ecology, biology, human history, and evolution. In the kitchen classroom, students prepare and eat delicious, nutritious, seasonal dishes made from produce they have grown in the garden. By studying the history and anthropology of food in the classroom and cooking and eating together in the kitchen, humanities classes develop a deeper understanding of other cultures and past civilizations. The Edible Schoolyard is a thriving national model for experiential learning in public schools nationwide. It hosts more than 1,000 visitors each year, from educators and health professionals to community advocates and legislators. The program has inspired, and offered active guidance to, several hundred kitchen and garden programs across the country. Nationally, and internationally, The Edible Schoolyard model has fostered discussion of educational, health, and environmental issues with policymakers, as well as numerous other nonprofit organizations and Federal agencies. The most visible program of its kind in the nation, The Edible Schoolyard has been featured on CBS, CNN, and Fox News; in documentary films and numerous books; and in People, Vogue, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and The Economist, among many others. The Foundation has welcomed interested parties as diverse as an inner-city school delegation from New York and, in late 2005, the Prince of Wales. In 2004, in partnership with the Berkeley Unified School District and the Center for Ecoliteracy, the Chez Panisse Foundation launched the School Lunch Initiative (SLI), a comprehensive strategy to transform the way children are educated about food, health, and the environment at the systems level. The SLI will benefit the 10,000 students in the Berkeley Unified School District's sixteen schools. The goals of the School Lunch Initiative are to: Provide delicious, healthy, freshly prepared meals using local, seasonal ingredients from sustainable farms to all of Berkeley's public school students. Integrate hands on learning opportunities in kitchen classrooms, instructional gardens, and school lunchrooms with academic and physical education programs. Renovate kitchens and cafeterias to accommodate on-site meal preparation, reduce packaging and waste, support recycling and composting, and enhance the dining experience. Collaborate with and educate community members, community groups, and agencies. Provide technical assistance and professional development to Berkeley Unified School District staff. Evaluate successes and document lessons learned.
Edible Schoolyard Academy
In response to the exceedingly high number of visits, emails, and phone calls from educators around the country looking to learn from ESY Project’s programs, the ESY Academy was launched in 2009. Each summer, the ESY Academy welcomes educators and administrators from around the world to an intensive three-day edible education immersion led by ESY Project staff. The ESY Academy is designed to support emerging garden and kitchen programs nationwide and to strengthen resource and information sharing among them. Through hands-on activities, presentations, guided discussion, and curriculum building sessions, participants learn to use tools for teaching edible education, integrating the garden, kitchen, and classroom.To date, the ESY Academy has welcomed 318 individuals from 155 programs, serving over 100,000 students nationwide. Information presented at the ESY Academy is made available to participants electronically and posted on the ESY Network.
Edible Schoolyard Network
The ESY Network serves to map the growing edible education movement and disseminate information about edible education and school lunch reform to schools, communities, and individuals nationwide. The site aggregates and shares the lessons and best practices of successful school gardens, kitchen classrooms, and lunch reform programs, while facilitating networking among educators and leaders in the edible education movement. An online map of edible education programs across the United States is updated every time a new program joins the network so that everyone can see the movement growing in real time. It can be viewed at edibleschoolyard.org(http://edibleschoolyard.org/) . The ESY Network is a place where educators, parents, and advocates can find and share information and see the breadth and depth of work being done across the country, creating a powerful tool for influencing policy makers on the issues of school lunch reform and edible education at the local, state, and national levels.
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Operations
The people, governance practices, and partners that make the organization tick.
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THE EDIBLE SCHOOLYARD PROJECT
Board of directorsas of 01/30/2019
Alice Waters
Alice Waters
Greta Caruso
James Alefantis
Jason Bade
Sylvia Chivaratanond
Jonathan Mascone
Julie Simpson