Cornell Cooperative Extension Community Horticulture

Good Afternoon!

I am very pleased to announce that the 2008-2009 applications for the Kids Growing Food and Bluebird mini grants are now available on our website (www.nyaged.org/aitc).  The deadline for both of these grants is Friday November 28th, 2008 and recipients will be announced by the end of January.

We are also working on completing the applications for the NEW  Kids Growing Food II: Continuation Grant, which will be available to educators who have previously received a KGF mini grant and the AITC Teacher of the Year Application.  We hope to have these applications up on the site by early October.  I will make sure to send out an announcement when they become available.

Please pass this announcement along, we are extremely excited to add to our list of grant recipients and welcome all applications!

If you have any questions regarding the grant process please feel free to contact me by phone or email.

Sincerely,
–

Heather Davis

Interim Coordinator

NY Ag in the Classroom

106 Kennedy Hall

Cornell University

Ithaca, NY 14853

(p) 607-255-9253

(f) 607-255-7905

hed24@cornell.edu

Deadline: October 31, 2008
Project Learning Tree® (PLT) awarded 24 GreenWorks! grants to schools and organizations across the country to involve students in community-based environmental projects. GreenWorks! is PLT’s service-learning program that engages PLT educators and their students with their local community in “learning-by-doing” neighborhood improvement projects. Since 1992, PLT has distributed over $565,000 to fund 810 grant projects in communities across the country. Proposals for the Fall 2008 cycle of grants are due on October 31, 2008. Grants up to $5,000 are available.

http://eelink.net/cgi-bin/ee-link/newclick/8913560

Love Your Veggies grant program is awarding $15,000 grants to 10 elementary schools across the country. Applications are now available online at  www.LoveYourVeggiesGrants.org through the November 7 deadline!

Grant awards will be based on proposals that demonstrate need, sustainability, innovation and potential for community involvement. Funding must be spent on any of the following:

• Fresh produce (vegetables and fruits)
• A vegetable station (such as a dedicated salad bar)
• Kitchen equipment (primary usage must relate to proposed program)
• Program staffing (cafeteria personnel, lunchroom staff, etc.)
• Nutrition education supplies
• Food safety training

www.LoveYourVeggiesGrants.org

These research articles note that according to their study:

Having a garden can decrease the likelihood of hunger among households.

They go on to state that:

This may indicate the important role of gardening in maintaining food security and underscore the need for educational programming related to both gardening and safe preservation methods. Initiating community or school gardens may be one strategy not only to teach gardening methods and improve food security, but also to improve dietary quality and promote health.

Food Security Status of Households in Appalachian Ohio with Children in Head Start
DAVID H. HOLBEN, PhD, RD; MEGAN C. MCCLINCY, RD; JOHN P. HOLCOMB, JR, PhD; KELLY L. DEAN, RD; CAITLYN E. WALKER, RD

Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Volume 104, Page 238-241

The Food Security Status of Ohio Food Pantry Users and Its Relationship to Household Characteristics
Journal of the American Dietetic Association, Volume 105, Issue 8, Supplement 1, August 2005, Page 14
K.E. O’Connell, D.H. Holben

I can’t post the whole article but CCE educators can contact Lori if you want a copy.

Deadline: November 1, 2008

National Gardening Association and Home Depot Announce 2009 Youth Garden Grants Program

The National Gardening Association has announced that Home Depot will return as the Youth Garden Grants sponsor for 2009.

NGA awards Youth Garden Grants to schools and community organizations with child-centered garden programs. In evaluating grant applications, priority will be given to programs that emphasize one or more of the following elements: educational focus or curricular/program integration; nutrition or plant-to-food connections; environmental awareness/education; entrepreneurship; and social aspects of gardening such as leadership development, team building, community support, or service-learning.

Schools, youth groups, community centers, camps, clubs, treatment facilities, and intergenerational groups in the United States are eligible. Applicants must plan to garden with at least fifteen children between the ages of 3 and 18. Previous Youth Garden Grant winners who wish to reapply may do so but must wait a year (e.g., if an organization won in 2008, it can apply again in 2010) and have significantly expanded their garden programs.

For the 2009 grant cycle, 125 grants are available. Packages are as follows: five programs will receive gift cards valued at $1,000 (a $500 gift card to Home Depot and a $500 gift card to the Gardening with Kids catalog and store) and educational materials from NGA; seventy programs will receive a $500 gift card to Home Depot and educational materials from NGA; and fifty programs will receive a $250 gift card to Home Depot and educational materials from NGA. Each award package also includes twelve months of NGA Supporter benefits.

Visit the NGA’s Kidsgardening Web site for complete program information.

This article from Hort Technology January - March 2008 reveals that in MN gardeners most often obtain their garden or plant related information from friends and neighbors.

…what this says to me is that our county community horticulture educators and volunteers are absolutely critical to our role in getting Cornell research based information to NYS citizen. The number of NYS citizens who view you as friends and neighbors far excessed anything Cornell University could gather.

Keep up the good friends/neighbor work. You are the faces of our successful CCE educational system.

Lori

Here’s the full research article and please share your perspectives with a comment.

article.pdf

Supporting Awareness of Nutrition and Hunger

Statistics show that in many U.S. classrooms you’ll find children who are overweight sitting
next to others wondering where their next meal will come from; many are not getting the right
balance of nutrients in their diets or enough exercise. Research conducted at Texas A&M
University supports the connection between kids’ food gardens and improved nutrition. Could a
school garden be part of the solution to the diet- and exercise-related challenges children
face? Many forward-thinking educators and parents think so, and have worked to create youth
garden programs that focus on nutrition and hunger issues.

As a way to encourage the growth of health-focused youth gardens, NGA recognizes outstanding
programs via the Healthy Sprouts Awards, sponsored by Gardener’s Supply Company. These awards
support school and youth garden programs that teach about nutrition and the issue of hunger in
the United States.

CCE educators here’s yet another reason to partner with your nutrition collegues

To be eligible for the 2008 Healthy Sprouts Awards, your school or organization must plan to garden in 2009 with at least 15 children between the ages of 3 and 18. The selection of winners is based on the demonstrated relationship between the garden program and nutrition and hunger issues in the United States.
This year NGA will present awards to 20 schools or organizations.

Applications must be postmarked no later than October 15, 2008. DOWNLOAD AN APPLICATION

Garden Crusader is a national award program that honors individuals who are using gardening to make a difference in their communities.

check out this document to find out how to nominate someone.

Sue Chayer
Garden Crusader Coordinator
Gardener’s Supply/Dutch Gardens
128 Intervale Rd
Burlington, VT 05401

Dear Friends, once again the New York State 4-H Foundation invites you to submit your grant application proposals. All the information and application forms can be found on the state website at the following location: http://www.nys4hfoundation.org/county_grant_program/index.php
The application deadline is April 1. Priority will be given to programs that are innovative and directed at one of the three program priority areas of science, engineering and technology, youth community action, or heathy lifestyle education. You may want to use the Guiding Principles for 4-H Youth Development as a guide to the program outcomes in each of the content areas. Close alignment to the outcomes will help to strengthen your chances of funding.
http://nys4h-staff.cce.cornell.edu/documents/Guidingprinciplesfinal_001.pdf

Please contact either myself or Ruth Campbell ( 255-0786) if you have questions about the submission process.

Barb
Barbara Schirmer
Assistant Director, Cornell Cooperative Extension
State Program Leader, 4-H Youth Development
Cornell University, 340 Roberts Hall
Ithaca, NY 14853
phone: 607-255-7958
fax: 607-255-0788
http://nys4h.cce.cornell.edu/
http://4hchoosehealth.blogspot.com/
CCE childhood obesity prevention campaign

ScienceDaily (Apr. 19, 2007) If you are looking for a way to encourage your children eat their fruits and vegetables, search no further than your backyard, suggests new Saint Louis University research.

Preschool children in rural areas eat more fruits and vegetables when the produce is homegrown.

“It was a simple, clear finding,” said Debra Haire-Joshu, Ph.D., director of Saint Louis University’s Obesity Prevention Center and a study author. “Whether a food is homegrown makes a difference. Garden produce creates what we call a ‘positive food environment.’”

Researchers interviewed about 1,600 parents of preschool-aged children who live in rural southeast Missouri. They found that preschool children who were almost always served homegrown fruits and vegetables were more than twice as likely to eat five servings a day than those who rarely or never ate homegrown produce.

The American Dietetic Association recommends between five and 13 servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

In addition, children who grow up eating fresh-from-the-garden produce also prefer the taste of fruits and vegetables to other foods, the parents told researchers.

The study, in the April issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association, found the garden-fed children were more likely to see their parents eating fruits and vegetables.

A greater variety of fruits and vegetables — more tomatoes, cantaloupe,broccoli, beans and carrots — also were available in the homes of families who nearly always had homegrown produce.

The implications of the research are important because they point to a simple way of getting kids to eat healthier, Haire-Joshu said. Plant a garden or encourage your school to do so.

“When children are involved with growing and cooking food, it improves their diet,” Haire-Joshu said. “Students at schools with gardens learn about math and science and they also eat more fruits and vegetables. Kids eat healthier and they know more about eating healthy. It’s a winning and low-cost strategy to improve the nutrition of our children at a time when the pediatric obesity is an epidemic problem.”

Adapted from materials provided by Saint Louis University.

Want to get started growing vegetables? Check out what working well for other vegetable gardeners at Cornell’s Vegetable Varieties for Gardeners