Food System Change Roadshow

A traveling package of activities designed to engage youth in thinking about where their food comes from, and how it affects both their health and the health of the earth.

A key goal of the road show is to develop activities that promote healthy eating and healthy lifestyle choices in the context of school and community environments, in an effort to prevent chronic illnesses associated with poor nutrition and childhood obesity.

The Collective Roots project design process is both open and collaborative, and depends upon the input from a variety of partners and stakeholders. School assemblies, community events, conferences, health fairs, afterschool programs and other venues are perfect places to reach large numbers of youth, and to feature the show.

The potential and future partners for this show include a wide range of corporate, foundation, nonprofit, educational and health organizations. Current partners include:

• corporate: Revolution Foods
• foundations: Palo Alto Community Foundation, Health Trust of Silicon Valley (HealthCorps)
• nonprofit: San Mateo County Food System Alliance, Healthy Silicon Valley Foodways Committee, Full Circle Farm, HEAL, Veggielution, Girls to Women, and others.
• educational: East Palo Alto Charter School, East Palo Alto Phoenix Academy, 49ers Academy, Ravenswood City School District, Clifford Elementary School and other school districts
• health: California Department of Public Health, Stanford University School of Medicine, Ravenswood Family Health Center

A number of road show components have already been developed and tested:

• bicycle blender: a kid-powered blender on a bicycle mixes nutritious fresh fruit smoothies, while teaching youth about the tradeoffs between calories burned, and calories consumed.
• green team relay race: making a salad is fun (and even more delicious) when racing with your friends, chopping the produce yourself, and cheering on your teammates. For more details, click here.

But we've only scratched the surface. Through future partnerships and collaborations, Collective Roots plans to grow the road show into an engaging and interactive program that adapts to a variety of settings. Components in development include:

• a small-scale farmers' market stand, a live mobile garden, food preparation demos, a RootsNFruits loteria game, fruit and veggie photo ops, and much more.
• a vehicle powered by solar energy or bio-fuels

Partnering with Collective Roots at this key formative juncture provides the opportunity to significantly shape the format, content and mission of the Food System Change Road Show, and play a key role in its future success.  

Please contact Wolfram Alderson, Executive Director of Collective Roots, for more information about how you can become involved with this exciting project.

Photos portray Stanford University Medical Students who support Collective Roots through the Population Health Program. The amazing contributions to this project made by these first year medical students and the results from this last year are available for viewing by clicking here.

Generous funding to support the development of this program has been provided by the Palo Alto Community Fund.