We love our partners, and want to share with our community more about the great work they do. Meet Campo School District!
Our partners at Campo School District, located in southeast Colorado, prioritize procuring and serving local products in their school meal programs and engaging their students through hands-on, experiential learning via culinary- and agricultural-related curriculum and projects! Campo participates in both the Colorado Local Food Program and Nourish Colorado’s Regional Food Systems Partnership grant. Both programs are focused on helping institutions launch and sustain procurement and service of Colorado grown, raised, and/or processed products in their meal programs. Nourish Colorado’s Healthy Food in Institutions team partners with the Campo School Food Service team, Ty and Sherrie Ownbey, and Sabra Lovejoy, a teacher, to provide technical assistance and training to support their Farm to School and Agricultural Education programs. For instance, our team has helped our Campo partners navigate, launch, and sustain their Farm to School program, and has provided training (e.g. recipes and culinary techniques) to their food service team to help them understand how to more often include Colorado products in their meal programs. We have also partnered with Sabra and her two sons, Milo and Malcolm, to advocate in Washington, D.C. for federal policy in support of Farm to School programming.
We asked Sabra to share a little more about Campo with us:
How does your organization’s work affect your community?
Our school is the center of the community. We provide meals, education, entertainment, and social engagement to people of all ages.
Tell us more about what Campo is doing with food systems outside of what you partner on with Nourish.
We had students who were on the planning committee for the youth portion of the Colorado Food Summit this past year. We teach students about growing and using food local foods and connect students and community members to local producers. We have encouraged local community members to expand their gardens and make shifts in livestock production to provide food for our community.
If you could say one thing to people in the community who are thinking about supporting food systems work, what would you say?
Find out what needs support in each local area then find the people with the passion and the expertise to develop that system and support that work.
How can people support you and your work?
They can cook with local foods and as the local food system develops, businesses can purchase local foods to serve back to our community.
How can folks find out more?
Visit www.campok12.org or follow us on Facebook
