11-2SG Environmental Partnerships
Grant Round:
2011 September
Grant Program:
Small Grants
Grant Type:
Other Grants
Grant amount requested:
2,500.00
Grant amount awarded:
$1,000.00
Attachments
Please provide a brief description of the project for which you seek funding.
We are gearing up for our second full year of Setting the Table: From Field to Plate, a service learning program for middle school and high school youth focused on issues of food, farming, and hunger. Our innovative, hands-on approach to food education was a huge success last year, with parents and participants eager to see us get underway again. This year, we have planned 2 ten-week sessions, fall 2011 and spring 2012. Half of our Sunday gatherings look at the suburban food system that our youth are a part of; the other half examines their relationship to the urban food system, with a particular interest in Boston's food insecure communities. Our leadership team, consisting of both adults and peer leaders, designed modules that examine activities all along the food system, literally from field to plate. Five weeks each session are spent doing hands-on service learning at farms and urban gardens, soup kitchens and food pantries, restaurants and groceries, where we have the opportunity to hear from excited members of our community already active in food systems change. Alternate weeks are spent engaging members of our community, from chefs to gleaners, in the kitchen, where they have conversations with our youth while teaching them their favorite dishes or just cooking with them. Each session culminates in a final dinner celebration for the wider Winchester community, with photo displays, speeches and a meal the youth have prepared. Building these relationships is central to our work of catalyzing community-level change. This project was first conceived by Environmental Partnerships and Parish of the Epiphany. We formed in response to a focus group for parents and students on youth programming; the people we talked to identified a need for a project that could engage youth from across the community in both healthy eating and community service. Due to an organizing effort last year, many community organizations have since lent their support as members of our Advisory Board (churches, area non-profits, the farmers' market, environmental groups, and the School Committee are all represented), grounding our program in community life. Our timeline is as follows: 1. Weekly Leadership Team Meetings 2. Monthly Advisory Board Meetings 3. Recruitment - Aug. and Sept. 2011 (Jan. and Feb. 2012) 4. Leader Training - Sept. 18, 2011 (Feb. 5, 2012) 5. Program Session - Sept. 25 to Dec. 11, 2011 (Feb. 12 to May 20, 2012) 6. Dinner Celebration - Dec. 11, 2011 (May 20, 2012)
Project Summary
Environmental Partnerships received a grant in 2011 to support the Setting the Table: From Field to Plate program, a service learning program for middle school and high school youth focused on issues of food, farming, and hunger.
Primary Issue Area:
Food
Please break-down/categorize the program expenses:
| Proposed Item | Estimated $ Amount | Would grant funds be used for this item? | Type Of Expense |
|---|---|---|---|
| Program Director - Community Organizing and Program Facilitation | $6,000.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Program Coordinator - Leadership Training and Program Facilitation | $5,280.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Final Dinner Celebration Fundraisers - Food | $2,400.00 | Materials | |
| Baking Supplies | $1,000.00 | Materials | |
| Snacks | $400.00 | Materials | |
| Field Trip Expenses | $320.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Audio/Visual Materials | $150.00 | Materials | |
| Communication and Outreach Materials | $150.00 | Yes | Materials |
| Miscellaneous Teaching and Gardening Supplies | $150.00 | Materials | |
| Final Dinner Celebration Fundraisers - Outreach Materials | $400.00 | Yes | Materials |
Whom does your group need to make this project happen?
Please explain how your group will engage members from your community in this project.
Over the past year, Setting the Table has grown from a pilot program into a major community initiative. Through an ongoing community organizing effort, we have expanded to include an 11-person Advisory Board with representatives from three different churches, several non-profits, environmental groups, the Winchester Farmers' Market, and the Winchester School Committee. With the help of our Board and our Leadership Team (a group of five adults and youth tasked with coordinating the week-by-week aspects of our programming), we have put in place several mechanisms for substantially engaging members of the community in this project. They include: 1. Recruitment - We have used our Board members' networks to reach out to and recruit from many groups that we did not have access to in the past. We have given presentations to the service club at Winchester High School, the PTA at McCall Middle School, the 1st Congregational Church, and Parish of the Epiphany. Members of our leadership team have also staffed a booth at the farmers' market throughout September. Our outreach materials have reached at least 1/4 of Winchester, or 5,000 people, through distribution by three local churches, appearances in two community newspapers, the middle school PTA newsletter, and the farmers' market newsletter. All of these efforts raise significant awareness of a growing need to explicitly include youth in deepening and contextualizing our relationships to food and the food system. 2. Program Volunteers - We have also engaged and continue to engage members of our community as program volunteers, inviting them to help lead a program gathering, either as a field trip host, a guest speaker, or a cooking instructor. Most weeks, we have one or more parents joining us as chaperones as well. We ask these volunteers to use their experiences to help youth step outside of expected relationships to food, to bridge cultural, social, and economic divides and so serve as a model for youth engagement with food and community. All of these efforts engage community members (and the youth participants) in hands-on, intimate yet shared experiences that, by exploring food's place in individual, communal, and ecological wellbeing, facilitates behavioral change. 3. Dinner Celebrations - These are our most substantial form of community engagement, happening at the end of each session this year. At least 200 community members will be invited to these events, featuring locally-sourced foods prepared by our youth. Many of these invitees have little to no direct experience with food systems change, so this dinner serves to both increase awareness and encourage behavioral change insofar as they are actually sharing a meal born of just food principles and practices. Youth presentations, slide shows, and photo exhibits enable community members to experience for themselves just how important these issues are to members of our community, to our youth, and precisely why they need to respond in kind. In addition to their ticket purchases (more than ninety in May 2010), we invite dinner guests to have ongoing involvement with us by signing up for our newsletter and other mailings, making further donations, and volunteering to drive, teach, or help with program development.
If your group receives a NEGEF Grow grant, how do you plan to pay for remaining expenses?
| $ Amount | Source |
|---|---|
| $3,000.00 | Participant Program Fees |
| $3,250.00 | Individual Donations by Community Supporters |
| $4,000.00 | Final Dinner Celebration Fundraisers |
| $3,000.00 | Grants (Applications are being submitted to NEGEF, Griffin Foundation, Rotary Club, & En Ka Society) |
| $1,000.00 | Parish of the Epiphany Youth Programs |
Please list these materials or services
| $ Amount | Item |
|---|---|
| $2,000.00 | Food Donations for Final Dinner Celebration Fundraisers |
Please describe what changes will occur in your community and its environment when your group's project is successful.
When Setting the Table is successful: 1. We will have empowered our youth to critically engage food systems issues as food leaders, trained advocates for a more just food system with basic relationships to adults already engaged in food systems change locally. 2. We will have made youth food education the focal point for a larger, community-level engagement that has brought together members from across our community to work towards increased awareness of food systems issues and behavioral changes in what we buy, what we eat, and how we relate to our food and one another. Measurable indicators of success regarding youth participants include: -Engagement - Youth will attend and participate in every program gathering. -Relationships - Youth will interview, individually or in small groups, at least 10 adults engaged in food systems change. -Knowledge - Program staff will collect and share with youth information about their learning/ attitude changes by holding focus groups using targeted questions at the beginning and end of each session. Youth will keep diaries reflective of their changing relationships to food and community. -Leadership - Youth will produce several collaborative end products (photo displays, speeches, slideshows) that effectively share what they have learned about the food system and their own evolving relationships within it, to be presented during our final dinner celebrations. Measurable indicators of community-level change include: -Volunteers - 10 new adults engaged in food systems change will form relationships with our youth by hosting a field trip, facilitating a cooking session or leading another program activity. -Partners - We will strengthen the capacity of our Advisory Board by adding at least 5 new citizen/organizational partners to it. -Supporters - We will engage an additional 200 program supporters and will fundraise at least $4,000 in individual donations in a move towards becoming a sustainable, community-based organization.
Please list how many people in your community your group expects to actively engage in this project.
5 000
What relevant skills does the group need (but does not currently have access to) to help move the initiative forward?
Our greatest need at this time is a stronger web presence to more effectively tell our story to a wider audience, making community engagement easier while propelling us into the digital age. Having web design skills on-board would also enable us to leverage/tap our participants' e-literacy and enthusiasm about helping tell the story of what they are learning, provided we can balance our web presence with the real relationships that are so key to building sustainable communities. Looking to the future, especially with rising institutional interest in food education for youth, we would benefit from access to branding and marketing skills. Though we have not had trouble with outreach to date, finding someone with more honed marketing experience might become necessary as we work to expand the number of supporters within our constituency.
What relevant skills do current members of the group have to help move the initiative forward?
As we have expanded our Advisory Board, the capacities of our group have also grown. We are now equipped to deal with most of the organizational and programmatic contingencies that arise in community work. We have two trained community organizers who are able to keep grassroots relationships at the forefront of our effort. We also have several members with a history of youth work, either through the school system or in after-school programming. One of our members has written a food justice curriculum for the national Unitarian Church. On the financial side of things, we have two board members with an extensive history of fundraising and long-term involvement with foundations. We also have a businessman familiar with the finer points of financial accountability, liability, and budgeting. For other organizational issues that might arise, we have an ongoing relationship with a lawyer in town.