Many Chicopee households depend on college meals to make sure their children get sufficient to eat, and Chicopee Contemporary has a mission to fight meals insecurity whereas supporting the native financial system. This system is making a distinction, with grab-and-go breakfasts and/or breakfast within the classroom in all their colleges, nutritious lunches and even in-classroom catering for particular events.
Chicopee Contemporary is the farm-to-school program of the Chicopee Public Faculties. Virtually eight years in the past, the district bought a grant from the Kendall Basis to launch Chicopee Contemporary, enabling Chicopee college cafeterias to attach with native farmers and meals producers, arrange methods that might be copied by different college districts, and develop college gardens. The dynamic initiative set sturdy roots to overtake the college lunch program and introduce regionally sourced substances.
At this time, Director of Meals Service Melanie Wilk and her staff of 105 staff serve 5,500 lunches per day throughout 15 colleges. Yearly, Chicopee Contemporary serves near 900,000 meals, with a meals funds round $3 million. Roughly 15% of that, or $450,000, is spent on regionally sourced merchandise.
Wilk attributes the strides Chicopee Contemporary has made towards meals safety locally to her staff. “We’ve got a hardworking, versatile, open-minded staff. Our longest-standing worker has been with us 38 years. Our employees is enthusiastic about feeding children and attempting new packages to introduce wholesome meals to college students,” says Wilk.
Wilk notes, “We hope that exposing completely different meals from seed to tray in school and involving children within the course of will encourage college students to take house what they’ve realized to their households. We hope to succeed in the entire household by sending house recipes, providing style assessments in school for the children, and making a wide range of dishes with native substances.”
A lot of the suggestions the Chicopee Contemporary staff receives is constructive. “For probably the most half, the children benefit from the meals we’re serving,” says Wilk. “It’s about serving to children type a constructive relationship with meals, studying how meals impacts the native financial system, and recognizing how wholesome meals impacts their our bodies. We attempt to affect from an early age,” she provides. Some knowledge suggests it takes eight to 12 tries of exposing a brand new meals earlier than a baby likes — and even tries — that new meals. “We simply hold attempting,” says Wilk, “and the children actually like issues that adults won’t count on a baby to actually like.”
The baking program sources native substances, various contemporary, do-it-yourself choices weekly. A latest grant by the New England Dairy Council funds a smoothie program in each excessive colleges as one other option to incorporate contemporary, native substances within the breakfast menu.
Chicopee can also be one of many solely native college districts with a full time Farm to College Program Coordinator, Brianna Jackson. On this function, Jackson manages the 9 college gardens and farm-to-school actions, together with planting and harvesting and creating new recipes to align with the Harvest of the Month program from the state.
When restrictions imposed by COVID-19 meant that oldsters couldn’t convey meals from house for classroom celebrations, the staff launched classroom catering to supply enjoyable, wholesome treats for birthdays and celebrations at a low value to folks. As a result of the catering is run by Chicopee Contemporary, meals delivered to school rooms is checked to accommodate scholar allergic reactions.
When the pandemic closed colleges, households who depend on college lunches every day to feed their youngsters had been strongly impacted. Between transportation and childcare in the course of the lockdown, it was difficult for some mother and father to choose up meals from packages like Chicopee Contemporary. “We noticed a possibility for us to convey meals to households, as an alternative of them coming to us,” Wilk says.
Earlier than the pandemic, Chicopee Contemporary employees had dreamed of the way to convey meals to the households with a meals truck. Wilk notes, “On a wing and a prayer, we utilized for the Meals Safety Infrastructure Grant, and to our shock we bought it. We utilized and acquired $153,000 to fund a meals truck.”
With the truck final summer season, Chicopee Contemporary handed out meals at libraries, 4 parks and neighborhood facilities, and elevated the quantity of summer season meals they handed out by 1000’s. Wilk notes, “We had been on the lookout for elements of Chicopee we had been lacking.” Now the truck is used for after-school meal pickup on the Chicopee Library in the course of the college 12 months.
“I grew up in Chicopee and I really feel enthusiastic about this neighborhood,” says Wilk. “I’m additionally a mother or father, and I all the time noticed myself combining diet and youngsters by some means, and I really feel like this function is the right mixture of those passions. I like to see our onerous work on the tray, and I really like sharing our program with others.”
Keep updated with Chicopee Contemporary by signing up for his or her publication on their web site and following their social media: https://www.chicopeefresh.com/
Lisa Goodrich is communications coordinator for Group Concerned in Sustaining Agriculture, (CISA). Store regionally this vacation season and go to buylocalfood.org/find-it-locally, the place you’ll discover every thing it’s worthwhile to enhance, cook dinner, and reward your approach by the vacations.
