Wednesday, April 3, 2024
Photo Credit: Nadiah Mohammed
FARSB has wrapped up the Spring season of our The Goodness in Food (TGIF) Program with local students. This session focused on educating young minds in Grades 3-5 on the importance of nutrition and healthy lifestyle choices. Our team and families that attended had a wonderful time learning about gardening, the anatomy of plants, irrigation techniques, and how to care for our environment while planting produce and plants alike.
“This program has been very exciting for me and everyone at the food bank. It's the first time we have had the pleasure of hosting it in our brand-new community learning center, which has enabled us to continue our efforts to help young students build valuable skills that go beyond a traditional classroom. The goal is not only to teach them about what foods to eat, but rather why that food is important and how it got to their plate in the first place. The more educated they are on these topics now, the closer we come to our goal of a hunger-free Inland Empire,” said Daniel Sazo, FARSB Programs Coordinator and TGIF Instructor.
Weekly Challenges and Activities
During this program, kids had weekly challenges to encourage them to eat healthier meals. Some goals included eating three new vegetables and re-growing food from the scraps of meals their families made during the week. During class sessions, typically 45-60 minutes each, they participated in fun warm-up activities, like a water transport relay to see which team could fill their cups with water first while dodging bananas as obstacles along the track.
Hands-On Learning
Daniel led presentations about why gardening is important for the environment, sustainability practices, and how runoff affects the ground around them when it occurs. They also had small quizzes to test their knowledge and how well they absorbed the information during their lessons. After their lessons, students tested their knowledge with hands-on activities like seed dissection, cress head plants, and bean growing.
Participants got to see the growth of their plants and seeds from previous weeks’ activities and better understand the importance of sustainable gardening practices for a greener future – all while having fun and collecting raffle tickets for cool prizes. When asked what they thought of the program, one parent said, “It’s a good way to learn and also interact with others in a different kind of setting than their regular activities.”
Garden Adventure
On the final week of TGIF, students and their families visited Tequesquite Community Garden in Riverside. At the community garden, they applied their skills, engaged in a thrilling scavenger hunt, and learned to make compost from a master gardener! One participant expressed, “Yeah, the kids [my son] met and everything he learned about the plant and the community were great!” Overall, TGIF has given many kids and parents a greater appreciation for the world around them.
Ending on a high note, our program has been a great success! We hope that the children will grow like seeds and continue to apply their newfound skills to their lives. We will have updates on the future TGIF sessions we can host in our new FARSB Hunger Resource Learning Center to help educate other grade levels on the goodness in food and how we can alleviate hunger together within the Inland Empire.
If you’d like to stay updated on our latest activities or inquire about the next session, please contact Daniel at dsazo@feedingamericaie.org.