The Produce Project provides access to healthy food and teaches entrepreneurial life skills by teaching students how to start and run a real business that provides inexpensive, local produce to students, families, and the community. Our mission is to:
provide access to healthy food for students and their families |
There might not be a grocery store in every neighborhood, but there is a school for every child. Schools will become an access point for fresh produce directly from wholesalers and local farms, providing access to fresh, nutritious food in communities across the state, many of which are identified as food deserts. The Produce Project will inspire enthusiastic student entrepreneurs to influence the health and well-being of their families and communities.
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decrease the burden of finding and purchasing low cost fresh food |
Linked here is a typical $18 share at our proof of concept distribution business in Raleigh, NC. This share saved a family about $45 in groceries. Through a school, students will distribute 100 shares each week for 30 weeks. With 5 contractors working 4 sites each and saving the community $45 per share, that’s an impact of $2.7 million in local communities. And that’s just year 2.
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teach practical, hands-on entrepreneurial thinking skills to students |
Students will build an actual business, using their school and community as a customer base. They will create a website, develop processes to track income and orders, submit orders for bulk purchases of produce, process those bulk purchases into orders, and distribute those orders to families. They will learn marketing, customer relations, and logistics. The Produce Project will be the ultimate in hands on, project-based learning, but it will also include blended content that is common core aligned in literacy, math, and science.
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impact childhood obesity by teaching them how to enjoy fresh, healthy food |
In addition to hands on entrepreneurship via project-based learning, students will also have access to weekly workshops in the form of flipped, or blended, cross-curricular lessons. Examples of workshops include nutrition; creating small gardens; preparing fast, easy, and delicious meals; making smoothies; dehydrating food; canning; and pickling.
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What we Do in a Nutshell:The Produce Project gives students a real entrepreneurial experience as they start an actual produce business at school. The project teaches business skills and promotes a healthy, produce-based diet that will lower grocery bills and combat childhood obesity. The business's "profits" provides children from food-insecure homes with healthy weekend meals. Student learning is bolstered by online content and hands on workshops that occur weekly throughout the year.
What is the Project? |
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The Produce Project will come to your school one day per week for one academic school year. In that year, we will work with your students to grow a business that distributes fresh produce to teachers, families, and the community. The profits that the student-run business accumulates will go towards providing healthy food for underprivileged students to take home for the weekends.
Participating students have access to blended workshops around business skills and healthy eating, and there will be hands-on learning workshops on site like 'growing your garden' and 'pickling for beginners.' Further, we will do 4 surveys at your school to show impact on healthy eating not only for students, but for your school's entire community. |
Want to be a Pilot School?
If you have a corporate sponsor who is interested or you would like to find grant funding to start a Vegetable Business Project at your school, the funding needed is about $22k for the year-long program. Contact us, and we'll start the planning phase right away. Here is a link to our Development Plan, a 3-pager we use as we seek funding.
