Sprouting good health habits
Category: Amway, Boys and Girls Club, Positive Sprouts
By: Gary Mougalian
How do you get kids to eat more veggies? As parents, we all know a diet full of brightly colored fruits and veggies provides important nutrients and antioxidants. Trouble is, most kids “just say no” when it comes to leafy greens – especially since many parents aren’t big fans either.
Solution? Get the kids involved in growing a garden full of vegetables!
That’s the idea behind a partnership with Amway and Boys and Girls Clubs around the country, through our Positive Sprouts organic gardening program.
In 2010, we introduced the Positive Sprouts program in seven cities across the country, to support the healthy lifestyle initiative of the Boys and Girls Clubs of America by helping kids plant gardens right in their own community.
Positive Sprouts aims to inspire kids from the Clubs to adopt good-health habits, set personal goals, and commit to a healthy lifestyle.
The program’s curriculum is designed to teach kids how to grow, harvest, and prepare nutritious fruits and vegetables. It’s a fun, productive way to help them learn about good nutrition through organic gardening.
This week’s garden build is at the Boys and Girls Club in Cypress, California, one of five Clubs selected this year to receive a grant from Amway to build a garden and teach the Positive Sprouts program.
The Cypress location is ideal. Members had already maintained a garden there for the past three years, but now the Club has moved to a new location at Clara J. King Elementary School in Cypress. The new location has many wonderful features – but no garden.
At least, not yet.
But bright and early this Saturday, I’ll be there, along with area dignitaries, Master Gardeners, volunteers, Amway staff and special guest Miss America 2011 Teresa Scanlan, plus members of the Green Education Foundation. Club members will work alongside all of us to plant four different fruit and vegetable garden beds.
We’ll also present fun educational stations, where kids and their parents can learn to make tasty, nutritious smoothies, plant their own seedlings to take home and grow, and paint garden sticks to identify the specific plants in their garden.
It all adds up to a full day of fun – as we help grow great nutrition habits for Cypress-area kids, straight from the ground up!
