The Flint Community School Garden Pop Ups were an exciting and welcome community collaboration. Throughout June of 2023, the Flint Registry visited six schools to engage with and provide programming and outreach materials to around 700 children and families.
Collaborating with the Crim Fitness Foundation and Food Corps this project strengthened and informed community members and partners alike. Juee and Alyssa, interns from the Michigan State University-Hurley Children’s Hospital Pediatric Public Health Initiative (PPHI), were amazing with the kids.
Community gardens have long served as a source of fresh produce for the residents of the communities in which they’re located. They are cultivated green spaces that provide positive environmental changes, as well as playing a part in combatting fresh food scarcity. The Crim Fitness Foundation’s Farm to School Project seeks to provide Flint Community Schools with these benefits by implementing school gardens throughout the district.
The gardens are spaces that allow Flint school students and residents to learn about nutritional health and also serve as a readily accessible resource. The gardens are such powerful resources because they teach nutritional sustainability to those from every walk of life and remove the stigma that healthy lifestyle choices are out of reach and inaccessible to those in the Flint Community. The Flint Registry has also played a part in helping to facilitate this effort by hosting pop ups such as the Healthy Eats and Sweets event geared toward kids that included a healthy food demonstration.
During one of the demonstrations Juee, a PPHI intern, was stationed at the pico de gallo table and spent her time teaching the kids how to make fresh, homemade pico de gallo. She had a lot of fun interacting with the children and teaching them about nutrition and healthy eating, giving them the opportunity to absorb the lessons alongside a fun cooking demonstration that emphasized their ability to recreate the recipes at home, as well as empowering them with the knowledge that because of the school gardens they could have access to fresh food daily.
Learn more about the garden pop ups in the video below: