New Fruit Orchard at Lynwood!
Lynwood Elementary School students in grades 2nd through 5th experienced education outside the classroom by planting a fruit tree orchard at school on September 29th. The orchard is a partnership between the school, the Lynwood PTA and Common Vision, a nonprofit that visits low-income schools and helps them plant fruit trees on campuses, as well as educate students and staff on how to maintain and nurture agriculture.
Orchard program fruitful for students
NOVATO ADVANCE
Common Vision partners with Novato school to plant fruit trees
What child doesn’t love playing in the dirt?
At Lynwood Elementary School the common childhood fondness of getting dirty is being fostered into a lesson on growing your own food and helping out your fellow man.
Last week the Lynwood Elementary School Parent-Teacher Association partnered with California-based Common Vision to assist second- through fifth-graders in planting a fruit orchard on campus, adding to the school’s garden area.
“This is the very first fruit orchard in the Novato Unified School District, and hopefully the first of many,” said Gretchen Schubeck, Lynwood PTA president. “Schools are such a wonderful place to educate children about the importance of eating healthy food.”
See more...Climate Change Education and School Orchards
Recently, I visited a school garden in one of California’s 10,366 public schools. A young teacher brought her class out to prepare a bed for planting, and the kids were hard at work pulling overgrown weeds from the soil. The 4th Grade worked excitedly as the garden provided them a well-earned break from traditional disciplines, but, there was something noticeable in the garden—a distinct lack of food to eat. There was no lettuce and no snap peas to enjoy. As I looked around, I realized there were very few plants that had reached their edible state. There was a lone kale stalk covered in aphids. A scraggily flat of starts sat on a bench. From the over 300 school gardens I have seen, I can say this struggling-to-keep-up, underproductive garden is a common sight.
See more...Students, nonprofit team up to plant fruit orchard at NU
THE UNION
A group of Nevada Union High School students traded their books for shovels on Monday as they joined the nonprofit Common Vision in planting 25 fruit trees on campus.
The orchard, planted on one-third of an acre, will be part of an outdoor classroom for the school’s Green Academy, which offers students an interdisciplinary curriculum focused around outdoor education, environmental education and activism.
See more...Orchard teaches Pittsburg students basics of growing sustainable food
EAST BAY TIMES
By Trine Gallegos
Willow Cove Elementary students really dig their school -- figuratively and literally.
The Pittsburg group recently moved outside the class and into the fresh air to plant a fruit tree orchard.The nonprofit Common Vision and Pittsburg Unified's nutrition services department are turning an empty area into a grove of trees. See more...Students help create orchards at Lompoc-area schools
LOMPOC RECORD
About 30 fruit trees were planted at Lompoc-area elementary schools this week, thanks to collaboration between the schools and the Common Vision organization.
Representatives of Common Vision, a nonprofit group dedicated to creating and sustaining orchards at schools around the state, worked with students at Hapgood Elementary School on Tuesday to plant 10 trees on that campus.
On Wednesday, they joined with students at Manzanita Public Charter School to plant 20 trees there.
See more...Planting Seeds for the Future
THE ALTERNATIVE DAILY
Obesity rates among American children and adolescents continue to soar, with more than twice the number of children and over four times the number of adolescents weighing in as obese, as opposed to children from 30 years ago.
The non-profit organization Common Vision is dedicated to improving the status of the roughly 6.5 million children who live in the midst of food deserts and are more susceptible to obesity. According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA), food deserts are areas in which at least 33 percent of the population lives more than a mile from a large grocery store or supermarket. These areas are often in lower income areas where transportation is difficult to access, and residents tend to suffer from more medical complications than those in other areas.
Common Vision combats food deserts in California by working with schools to plant free orchards that provide students with fresh food. Its recent campaign launched via Indiegogo has exceeded its goals of $60,000 that will enable the organization to engage 15,000 more kids in planting 1,000 barren lots with fruit trees that are ripe — and free — for picking.
See more...Give a School an Orchard, Teach Kids to Eat Right for a Lifetime
TAKEPART
A nonprofit organization is working to plant 1,000 orchards to help low-income students make healthier food choices.
As many as 6.5 million American children live in neighborhoods where fresh fruits and vegetables are hard to come by, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. In these food deserts, as they’re known, a greasy slice of pizza is easier found than a nutritious salad. To help improve the situation, one nonprofit is setting out to help improve such kids’ eating habits by planting organic fruit orchards around low-income public schools.
Jason Mraz, Organic Valley and Common Vision Team Up to Plant Orchards in 1000 Schools
MUSIC FOR GOOD
By Anna DiBlosi
Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Jason Mraz in junction with Organic Valley, a family-run farming cooperative, has teamed up with Common Vision, a nutritional justice group, to show support for Common Vision’s campaign to plant 1,000 orchards at low-income schools.
See more...Modern-day Johnny Appleseeds announce ambitious program to plant orchards at 1000 California public schools
TRIPLE PUNDIT
Ten years ago a small grassroots group of nutritional justice activists from Northern California retrofitted a pair of buses to run on recycled vegetable oil and solar power and set south on a mission to plant orchards at low-income public schools throughout the Golden State.
Since their humble beginnings, Common Vision has planted over 6,500 fruit trees at hundreds of schools from San Diego to Sacramento, attracted seed money from corporate leaders like Organic Valley, Nutiva and Clif Bar, and even won an Emmy Award for a PBS television documentary about their one-of-a-kind traveling tree-planting troupe, best known to students as Fruit Tree Tour.
Now, with a little help from multi-Grammy Award winning singer-songwriter Jason Mraz and farming cooperative Organic Valley, the all-volunteer army of modern-day Johnny Appleseeds is announcing its most ambitious goal yet— orchards in the ground at 1,000 California public schools by 2025.
See more...
