FoodCorps is an American non-profit organization whose mission is to work with communities to "connect kids to healthy food in school." FoodCorps places service members in limited-resource communities where they spend a year working with teachers and students to establish farm to school programs, incorporate nutrition education into school curricula, plant school gardens, and engage in other initiatives to improve school food. Like Teach for America and Habitat for Humanity, FoodCorps is a grantee of AmeriCorps.
History
FoodCorps was founded in 2010 by six people:
Curt Ellis, co-creator of the documentary King Corn and recipient of the Heinz Award
Two of the six cofounders, Ellis and Upton, still work with the organization as Chief Executive Officer and VP of Innovation and Strategic Partnerships, respectively.
Function
FoodCorps’ mission statement is: "Together with communities, FoodCorps serves to connect kids to healthy food in school." FoodCorps works by placing service members on year-long service stints at community-based Service Sites, where they work in low income public schools to improve nutrition. Statewide Host Sites oversee the Service Sites within each state in which FoodCorps operates. FoodCorps Service Members are individuals generally between 18 and 30 years old, with backgrounds in agriculture, nutrition, health and food policy. They are paid a modest stipend to perform a year of food and nutrition-related service inside local schools. The applicants are screened through a competitive vetting process. The first FoodCorps class has 50 members. FoodCorps states that it hopes to have 1,000 Service Members in all 50 states by 2020. Service Sites are community-based organizations that offer direct service opportunities in the fields of food and nutrition education, school gardens, and local procurement for school food systems. These are the locations to which Service Members report for day-to-day service. There are 41 Service Sites. Host Sites are FoodCorps’ statewide partners which oversee the Service Sites. They are generally non-profit organizations, educational institutions or public agencies. In most cases, Host Sites determine the communities and non-profit organizations with which Members will work, and help create training and orientation opportunities for FoodCorps service members. The Host Site partners are:
