EnrichLA: A Garden in Every School

Food insecurity and access to basic needs

Expand existing project, program, or initiative (expanding and continuing ongoing, successful work)

Many students at schools in Los Angeles have limited access to green spaces and especially edible gardens. In addition, many of the students come from under-served communities that also face challenges in having access to healthy, affordable fruits and vegetables. Within the schools serviced by EnrichLA’s Garden Ranger Program, 86% of students are considered socioeconomically disadvantaged and underprivileged. While within the United States, 30-40% of the food supply is lost to food waste. We have found that people want to eat nutritious foods and lead healthy lifestyles, though many health problems in our community are caused by numerous systemic factors rather than individual choices. This includes lack of access to nutritious foods, education on nutrition, and healthcare as well as other environmental issues like pollution. The cost of living continues to rise while schools lose funding from budget cuts, which only creates more barriers for our community.

EnrichLA’s primary goal is to expose as many students to garden and nutrition education as possible and increase exposure to and promote positive attitudes towards nutritious foods. Our program allows for a learning opportunity not commonly included in the general curriculum for public schools and gives students the opportunity to spend more time outdoors. Our Garden Ranger Program nurtures curiosity, environmental stewardship, and strong relationships with nutritious foods and organic growing practices. We believe providing opportunities for tangible success in the garden also translates to the classroom and community as students build compassion, confidence, teamwork and problem solving skills, independence, responsibility, and trust. When children develop healthy relationships with the food they grow in the garden, they are more likely to do so in other aspects of their lives and will encourage their families to support their healthy lifestyle and eating habits. Students help harvest and prepare the foods they grow, and whatever is not eaten is shared with families, staff, and community. As children express their excitement about the garden to their caregivers, adults become interested and eager to volunteer. School staff are present during lessons and see the gardens flourish, often showing just as much curiosity as the students. This extends our garden and nutrition education to adults as well.

Although this program primarily targets youth in schools, the goal of our gardens is to create a launching pad for further collaboration among members of the entire community. We want to excite students, staff, and the community about this gardening program to promote health-related objectives that will improve the general health of the immediate population. EnrichLA strives to be a part of the effort in pushing Los Angeles toward food equity and justice. We work to provide direct access to nutritious foods and harvests are shared with the community. In addition, EnrichLA's edible gardens provide our schools and the surrounding community with open, green space in LA’s urban setting. We use organic gardening methods and water conservation practices to promote sustainability. Our gardens are habitats for wildlife and help increase biodiversity in the area which promotes a healthy ecosystem for all. As our program continues to expand we hope to reach even more members of our community.

We track how many students at each school participate in at least one cycle of garden class. To measure the effectiveness of our program, we have a variety of ongoing assessments aimed at both schools and Garden Rangers. The combination of these assessments provides dynamic and continuous feedback that we consider as we strengthen our curriculum, teaching methods, and our relationship to schools and their communities. EnrichLA also evaluates how Garden Rangers have tailored and improved their curriculum and teaching approaches for schools at which they have taught for more than two years. We also collect and analyze data from sources such as LA County Department of Public Health to determine the long-term positive effects of school garden education by evaluating changes in obesity and diabetes rates. Finally, we measure the California Assessment of Student Performance and Progress (CAASPP) to identify correlations between our program’s availability in schools and student test scores.