Think&EatGreen@School: City of Vancouver Food Literacy Curriculum
Visit the Think&EatGreen@School site
Project Team
Will Valley, Senior Instructor; Academic Director of the Land, Food and Community Series, Faculty of Land and Food Systems (PI)
Lisa Powell, Postdoctoral Fellow, Institute for Resources, Environment and Sustainability; Department of Geography, University of Fraser Valley
Partner
Vancouver School Board
Funding
City of Vancouver
About the Project
From 2010 to 2015 the Think&EatGreen@School (TEGS) project worked to create healthy and sustainable school food systems in the Vancouver School District, and has been relaunched in 2017. The 2017-19 installation of the project will continue to support teacher food literacy development via school-year workshops and Summer Institutes. Small grants will also be offered to support schools, non-profit organizations and further research. Additionally, TEGS will support activities and research centred on food literacy and food access.
“The goal of TEGS is to support teachers to develop foundational food literacy knowledge and skills, while integrating teaching about broader issues of food, health, and the environment,” says Dr. Will Valley, LFS Instructor and Academic Director of the Land, Food, and Community Series and TEGS coordinator from 2010 to 2015.
TEGS began as an SSHRC- and CIHR-funded project headed by LFS Faculty member and Principal Investigator Dr. Alejandro Rojas. It teamed university researchers with schools to create and support growing food at school, cooking and farm-to-school programs, teaching students about the food system, as well as researching policy and programs to support healthier and more sustainable food systems at schools.
External Links and Publications
Rojas, A., Black, J., Orrego, E., Chapman, G. & Valley, W. (2017). Insights from the Think&EatGreen@School Project: How a community-based action research project contributed to healthy and sustainable school food systems in Vancouver. Canadian Food Studies, 2(4), https://doi.org/10.15353/cfs-rcea.v4i2.225
Banner Photo Credit: Martin Dee