French PDF: For Schools – What can we do?

English PDF: For Schools – What can we do?

Download the full Nipissing and Area Food Charter Toolkit PDF

Health & Wellness

  • Provide healthy, affordable food choices to students daily, at special events, and for fundraising.
  • Create opportunities for students, faculty and staff to provide input into what food is served and sold at school.
  • Support school wellness programs to define and implement healthy eating efforts. Involve teachers, students, administrators, parents, food service staff and health unit staff.
  • Contact the health unit for more information on how they can support school nutrition initiatives.

Sustainable Economic Development

  • Fundraise using locally grown and produced items. Learn about Community Supported Agriculture initiatives.
  • Purchase and prepare foods grown locally.
  • Connect with local growers to supply student nutrition programs.

Social Equity

  • Participate in “Grow A Row” where an extra row of produce is grown in your garden to donate to a community food program.
  • Ensure student nutrition programs are not stigmatizing.
  • Create barrier-free opportunities for food activities like gardening and cooking.
  • Look for opportunities within programming to raise awareness about food security issues.
  • Encourage school community to donate only high quality, healthy food for food drives to increase access to healthy foods.

The Environment

  • Raise awareness about the importance of reducing food miles by buying local food.
  • Reduce waste by composting and recycling.
  • Promote ‘litterless lunch’ events or contests to reduce both waste and consumption of processed foods.

Food Literacy

  • Create a vegetable garden at your school.
  • Arrange a field trip to a local farm to learn about where food comes from.
  • Look for opportunities within curriculum to teach about food and practice food skills (e.g., budget for groceries in math class, work in the garden during phys. ed).
  • Have students help prepare food for student nutrition programs.
  • Engage and empower students to improve the food culture of schools. Ask for their suggestions and ideas.
  • Contact a Public Health Dietitian for support and resources.

Culture

  • Offer a diversity of food products and flavours.
  • Participate in local food festivals and events to celebrate the diversity of food.
  • Promote healthy celebrations within the school community (e.g., offering fruit kebabs for birthdays)
  • Use food to celebrate other cultures and link with the curriculum.

We would like to acknowledge the Guelph Wellington Food Roundtable’s wonderful work creating the Food Charter Toolkit that this document is based on.