The Consumer Wellness Center (CWC), a non-profit organization dedicated to promoting nutrition as a way to prevent disease and enhance human health and longevity, announces its seventh annual Nutrition Education Grant Program. This year it is named the Holly Moran Grant in honor of one of its cherished original members, Holly Moran, whose life was dedicated to helping families experience health abundance through the miracles of nutrition and small-scale gardening.

The 2014 recipients are:

1. Seedleaf
   Seedleaf's mission is to increase knowledge of food for families at risk of hunger, and the organization's efforts have resulted in the creation of 14 area community gardens. These gardens provide sources of hands-on education for local youth and adults to increase their access to healthy, fresh fruits and vegetables. With the grant money, Seedleaf plans to host Cooking Clubs that will empower the youth with cooking and gardening skills while encouraging self-reliance, healthy food choices, physical activity, and caring for the natural environment.
2. Garden Culinary Arts Boot Camp
   GROWING UP is an after school program series designed to teach students aged 14-18 Culinary Arts using fresh vegetables, fruit and herbs from the George Wythe Edible School Garden and surrounding urban farms and community gardens. The group will be creating a cookbook from the meal ideas with the hopes of raising money in support of future classes.
3. Roosevelt Elementary in San Grail, CA
   Roosevelt Elementary school will be using the grant money to build 8 garden boxes. Each grade level will be responsible for their own garden box. The school will also provide nutrition classes to teach the students about the produce they are growing. Students will experience cooking classes that teach them how to make meals with their garden goods while embracing the importance of organic vs. non-organic gardens.
4. Burney Junior Senior High School and Mt. Burney Center
   These two schools are teaming together to begin maintaining an apple orchard on property that was previously abandoned. Their goal is to get an orchard functioning, with healthy growth and production, and to involve students in the entire growth and harvesting process. Plans call for the orchard to help teach students the value of food self-reliance, benefits of physical effort in food production and to even help produce a modest income through the sales of apples.
5. The Catholic Charities, New Hampshire
   The Catholic Charities' "Our Place Program" in New Hampshire specializes in prenatal and parenting education. Their focus is to empower high-risk, low-income, new or expecting young mothers with the knowledge, skills and confidence to select and prepare nutritious and affordable meals for themselves and their children. Their ultimate goal is to improve nutrition practices, eating habits and food budgeting skills among these young woman. They will use the CWC grant funds to help support these educational programs that impact women.
6. MaituFoods
   MaituFoods offers the Maitu Abundance Program which offers a 2-day hands-on enrichment course in proper nutrition during pregnancy, home health garden techniques, and children's nutrition. Through this program, they teach meal options and shopping strategies for items that promote health and well being. They work with midwives and nutrition specialists to develop meal plans for their families and receive hands-on experience with gardening and meal preparation.
   MaituFoods November 2015 update (contains photos)
7. Fitness and Nutrition Club at Anderson Valley Elementary School
   The Fitness and Nutrition Club will be using the grant to facilitate the connection between school and home by organizing free cooking classes and cooking demonstrations for FAN Club students and their families. They hope to collaborate on finding healthy alternatives to common foods consumed at home and establish healthier eating habits for their students and their families.
8. Somali Bantu Youth Organization
   The SBYO will be funding a monthly childrens' and parents' nutrition program designed to improve the nutritive quality of foods consumed at home as a whole. They plan to assess the health of all participants prior to and after the program, with the hopes of evaluating the nutritive quality of current diets of Somali Bantu students while identifying positive changes from program participation.
9. The Barren County YMCA
   The YMCA plans to use their vacant land adjacent to the club to introduce students to the experience of gardening, motivate kids to eat and love fruits and vegetables, promote physical activity, and teach students to nurture and care for other living things. In addition they hope to teach responsibility, patience, team work and social skills.
10. Weaverville and Hayfork Youth Centers
    These Youth Centers are teaming up with the Human Response Network to organize field trips to local farmers' markets to meet with farmers, brainstorm on what they would like to grow and create gardens for the students to maintain. Grant funds will also be used to work with a nutritionist to create healthy and exciting meals with the items acquired from the farmers' markets.
11. Pine Village retirement facility
    Pine Village, a continuing care retirement facility (CCRC), is actively educating their staff and residents on the essentials of home grown food. Last year they began planting gardening boxes and raising chickens. Their residents enjoyed meals from the gardens while getting back to their roots and farming again, like many of them did in their younger years. Their hope is to extend the gardens, adopt more chickens and start cooking classes for many of the staff (who are predominately young women).

Please contact us with any questions regarding this program.