Giving Tuesday

Today is Giving Tuesday and our Annual Campaign starts today.  This year we are encouraging you to join our Circle of Giving.

Tomatoes will be placed on our tomato plant canvases displayed in local elementary schools with donors names to show their dedication to connecting children to healthy food and nature.

“This is the best thing in the world!”

– 3rd Grader from State Road School after making and trying Apple Coleslaw with Grow La Crosse

Visit www.GrowLaCrosse.org/donate 

for more details and join the Circle of Giving

Why we do what we do.

In graduate school, I studied the effects that school garden programs have on children. Garden programs can double a child’s fruit and vegetable intake, cut down on behavior problems and allow the numerous benefits of being outdoors. Looking at the research, the results seemed too good to be true. My experience working with children in school gardens has shown me the positive power of connecting children to healthy food and nature.

Garden time does have amazing benefits.

Some highlights from this fall:

• Eating healthy – Seeing children ask for thirds on a cabbage dish they just helped make was very rewarding.  Children helped make apple coleslaw and some got to help pick the cabbage straight out of the garden.
• Learning skills – At the beginning of the fall, 25% of students said they knew how to compost. After completing a 10 week composting program, 83% of students felt they could compost on their own. We enjoyed composting lunch scraps and turning “waste” into healthy soil.
• Time in nature – The excitement a child expresses when finding a worm will never grow old. We spent a lot of time digging and investigating in the garden.
• Those in need – A Grow La Crosse volunteer helped at one of our YMCA cooking lessons this fall. She found it to be a very powerful and humbling experience and said this about our programming:
  

  “This Grow La Crosse program is wonderful.  Some children in this program typically are not able to go home after school until around 8:00. During your program, these children were able to come to a safe place and attend a cooking class where they are taught to cook local and seasonal food. Brilliant!” – A Grow La Crosse Volunteer