Media Advisory from the San Diego Unified School District, Oct. 25, 2018
2018 Farm 2 School Family Picnic
What: The 2018 Farm 2 School Family Picnic (https://farm2schoolpicnic.eventbrite.com) is a community-oriented event to celebrate the Farm to School movement within San Diego County. The family picnic is hosted by the new Farm 2 School Collective, which consists of following five school districts: Cajon Valley Union, Julian Union, San Diego Unified, San Ysidro, and Sweetwater Union High. These school districts account for roughly 35% of the entire County’s entire student population (~170,000 students).
Together, these school districts and their vendors will be providing tasty samples of local food during the picnic for all to enjoy. The picnic will also include outdoor games, music, and the opportunity for schoolchildren, their parents, and their communities to enjoy and learn about the high quality of local, healthy food provided each day to students across these school districts.
Who: Prem Durairaj, Director of Food Systems and Research for Community Health Improvement Partners; Donald Hooper, Head Chef of Jeremy’s on the Hill; Mark Mendoza, Child Nutrition Services Director for Cajon Valley Union School District; Tricia Elisara, Garden and Farm to School Coordinator for Julian Union School District; Tara McNamara, Marketing Coordinator for San Diego Unified Food & Nutrition Services; Francisco Mata, Public Relations & Community Services Coordinator for San Ysidro School District
When: 10:30 a.m.-12:30 p.m., Saturday October 27, 2018
Where: Presidents Way Lawn, Park Boulevard & Presidents Way in Balboa Park, San Diego, CA 92101
Why: The Farm 2 School Family Picnic serves as the launch event for the new Farm to School Marketing Campaign during the 2018-2019 school year. The purpose of the campaign is to improve community perception of school meals, and shed light on what
Farm to School means within the five participating school districts. School food has changed dramatically over the last decade, and this is a chance for parents to see (and taste) it together with their children.
By shifting the community perception of the food served in cafeterias, we hope to improve the school meal participation rate within the school districts involved in the Farm to School Collective. We believe that the more parents are informed about what is being served in the cafeterias, the less likely they are to send their child to school with an unhealthier, more expensive lunch packed from home.
The Farm 2 School Family Picnic is managed by the Farm to Institution Center, a department of the San Diego non-profit Community Health Improvement Partners (CHIP). CHIP brings together diverse partners to assess community health needs, and to educate and advocate to create policy, systems and environmental change to reduce health disparities. CHIP provides backbone support to plan, coordinate, and support collaborative initiatives to solve our most complex health problems.
The Farm 2 School Family Picnic event is sponsored by the San Diego Foundation.
Visuals:
10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.: School districts host a large scale family picnic (healthy, local food samples, games, music, etc.) for San Diego families (est. 500-800 people)
11:00 a.m. – 12:00 p.m.: Local sports teams, the San Diego Guardians and San Diego Legion, will be participating in activities with attending school kids.
12:00 p.m.: California Crunch activity – schoolchildren coordinate taking a delicious bite of local produce (e.g. apples) together. Crunch activities are held across the nation during October (Farm to School month). See here for further details.
Available upon request – local food cooking demonstration by Chef Donald Hooper. Chef Hooper works for Jeremy’s on the Hill, a well-known restaurant in Julian, to provide healthy, fresh food for Julian Union School District. His work with the school district is a unique example of Farm to School.
Media contact: Dave Palmer: 619-800-3865 (work), 615-429-6258 (cell)
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