Consumer Wellness Center awards eleven grants to help teach food self-reliance, nutrition and healthy food choice to women and children

Monday, January 12, 2015
by Mike Adams, the Health Ranger
Tags: food self-reliance, Consumer Wellness Center, grant awards

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(NaturalNews) As the Executive Director of the Consumer Wellness Center (www.ConsumerWellness.org), I'm thrilled to announce the 2014 grant recipients who received grant funding from the CWC to promote food self-reliance and nutrition programs all around the world.

As Natural News readers know, the CWC is a non-profit 501(c)3 organization that works to empower consumers with information on wellness, disease prevention, nutrition, peak mental and physical health and more. The 2014 grant program is named the "Holly Moran Grant" in honor of this remarkable woman who brought tremendous light to the world and was one of the key coordinators of the grant program.

The Consumer Wellness Center spends 100% of donations on actual programs and spends zero dollars on salaries. My own position at the CWC as Executive Director is a non-paid position. If you wish to donate to the CWC to help support future grants, you may donate at this page. You can read about myself, the Health Ranger, at www.HealthRanger.com

How we selected grant awardees

In applying for the grant, each applicant was asked to describe their plan for using the grant funds to help promote food gardening, nutritional awareness or food self-reliance.

All applicants were asked to commit to sharing a report of how the grant funding is impacting the lives of program participants (children, expectant mothers, senior citizens, and so on).

Here's a brief description of the 2014 Holly Moran Grant recipients and how they plan to use the grant funding:

Seedleaf

See the SeedLeaf website here

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.

Garden Culinary Arts Boot Camp

See YouTube video here

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.

Roosevelt Elementary in San Grail, CA

See school website here

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.

Burney Junior Senior High School and Mt. Burney Center

See school website here

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.

The Catholic Charities, New Hampshire

See website here

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.

MaituFoods

See website here

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.

Fitness and Nutrition Club at Anderson Valley Elementary School

See school website here

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.

Somali Bantu Youth Organization

Click here for their website

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.

The Barren County YMCA

See the YMCA website here

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.

Weaverville and Hayfork Youth Centers

See the website here

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.

Pine Village retirement facility

See the website here

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).

More donations coming in 2015

In addition to these Holly Moran grant awards in 2014, the Consumer Wellness Center will be making a significant number of donations in the form of breakthrough food production technology being announced in 2015 at www.FoodRising.org

Watch for more announcements here on Natural News concerning food self-reliance, innovative food production inventions and much more... 2015 is going to be a very exciting year at the Consumer Wellness Center and Natural News!

Learn more about the Consumer Wellness Center at www.ConsumerWellness.org

Click here to learn more about the Health Ranger.