Youth and community education
youth development
Programming
In 2016, Food Strong Founder Sara Continenza began to work closely with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District to build a School Garden toolkit and curriculum based on Ohio's Learning Standards. Food Strong has since guided students at over a dozen public schools through designing, planting, maintaining, and harvesting onsite fresh food and flower gardens. This weekly or bi-weekly program significantly emphasizes STEAM stills, entrepreneurship, environmentalism, social-emotional learning, and community development. We offer hands-on nutrition, culinary arts, and entrepreneurship lessons. We are training our students to be Fresh Food Ambassadors so they can teach their peers about the foods we grow and how fresh foods can be medicine for the body. We have also partnered with local artists to guide our students through the design and creation of food-focused murals to spread awareness while beautifying our communities. This mural project is funded by Cuyahoga Arts and Culture.
Food Strong also operates a Learning Garden at the urban farm at the Coit Road Farmers Market which serves as an onsite location where various educational programs can be hosted. The Learning Garden was our response to the pandemic and consequent school closures, allowing us to bring small groups of learners together in a safe, outdoor environment. Our students regularly practice selling their produce at farmer's markets to gain business skills. We continue to expand our entrepreneurship programming and recently hosted a 2-week Fresh Camp in partnership with Refresh Collective and funded by the Garden Club of Cleveland.
Please contact us if you are interested in bringing a garden program to your school or facility, or if you would like to organize a field trip for your students to our Learning Garden. ​Thank you to the Rite Aid Healthy Futures Foundation and United Way Greater Cleveland for sponsoring our school program! We also appreciate our close partnership with the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. We are participants in their Science Department's CLE4SCI collaborative, and through our partnership with the Nutrition Department, every school we are in gets a fresh fruit and veggie bar!
See our garden program featured on:
culinary classes
Food Strong is available to provide your organization with affordable, healthy cooking classes. We create interactive learning experiences for various learners explicitly targeted to the needs and goals of the population served. We bring these classes to our schools where we teach students how to cook healthy meals from scratch using items that we harvest our gardens. We also have a blender bike- a fun way to create healthy dishes such as soups and smoothies. We can bring this bike out to your event. Let's make nutritious eating delicious and exciting!
fresh camp
Fresh Camp, brought to the city of East Cleveland by Food Strong and Refresh Collective, serves up loads of fun to local students. Students laugh, build social skills, and learn about nutrition while constructing an original rap song surrounded by the beauty of nature.
Fresh Camp builds leaders and foster new friendships and is made possible through the support of main sponsor, The Garden Club of Cleveland, and also sponsors Boom’s Pizza, United Way of Greater Cleveland, Rite Aid Healthy Futures, Spice Field Kitchen, Cuyahoga County, The Cleveland Foundation, and The Conservancy for Cuyahoga Valley National Park. This camp is held at The Coit Road Farmer’s Market and across the street at the Food Strong Learning Garden located on Woodworth Avenue in East Cleveland.
Email Info@FoodStrong.org if you are interested in partnering with or being involved with next season's Fresh Camp.