Growing Healthy Kids

Growing Healthy Kids brings highly engaging, standards-based outdoor education to public school students during the school day to build academic success while promoting physical and mental wellness. What began as a pilot in 2015 has grown to be a multifaceted program providing standards-based garden, nutrition, and outdoor education during the school day to over one third of MDUSD students. In addition to garden education at students’ schools, Growing Healthy Kids provides free field trips to students at low income schools, leads school greening projects, and distributes organic vegetables and fruits in areas with low access to fresh produce. Growing Healthy Kids also trains staff, community members, MDUSD classroom teachers, and MDUSD high school students in how to teach outdoors effectively. 

Growing Healthy Kids’ desired outcomes are to improve student physical and mental wellness while simultaneously supporting academic success. To that end, staff has a positive,  collaborative working relationship with top MDUSD administration across Educational Services, Maintenance & Operations, and Food Services, to promote regular Outdoor Learning as a key component of healthful academic learning. Growing Healthy Kids’ collaborative, high-quality programs have quickly grown to be a model in the school garden community, and Growing Healthy Kids staff have given invited talks at national, state, and local venues. 

Growing Healthy Kids’ current operating budget is $895,000, with a part-time staff of 22 employees who serve 12,000 students in 17 school garden spaces. Growing Healthy Kids is a fiscally sponsored organization. More information about the organization and its programs is available at growinghealthykidsbayarea.org.