Good Earth Natural Foods, Cavallo Point Chef, Milagro Foundation, & Conscious Kitchen model lunches for Bayside Martin Luther King School are making it happen!
These five organizations unite to establish model school kitchen and garden directly on the premises to provide nutritious, non-packaged, seasonal non-gmo, organic food breakfasts and lunches for Bayside Martin Luther King School in Marin City, California.
Cavallo Point Chef, Justin Everett, takes time from his busy work schedule to help guide The Conscious Kitchen the lunch program. Chef Justin became involved when he chaperoned a group of 5 young children on a field trip to the tide pools in Marin County; he noticed that one young student opened up his lunch which looked like something purchased from the 7-11 Store — lunch-ables, snicker bar and a soda. He remarked to the student, “This must be a special lunch for today?” The student replied, “This is what I eat every day!”
Soon after this incident, he was approached by Judi Shils of a local non-profit Turning Green to partner with Bayside MLK school to establish a lunch program permanently.
Rachelle, a student at BMLK, spoke about helping in the garden on the school ground where students learn how to plant vegetables and flowers. The vegetables are used to make salads served on a regular basis. This gives students the knowledge on how to grow organic vegetables and to take pride in what they actually helped to provide freshly grown vegetables for lunches to the entire school! Milagro Foundation was the initial funder of the MLK garden in 2010 and were the sole support for the first three years. Milagro Foundation continues to be a partner of The Conscious Kitchen and the garden at the school.
Photo from garden: left to right: Sarah, Garden Coordinator; Dana, Volunteer Mother; and Al Baylacq, Owner/Founder of Good Earth Natural Foods
Conscious Kitchen, located in Sausalito, California, began August 2013 with Judi Shils, at the helm, who had this vision of bringing fresh, organic, seasonal, non-GMO foods to all schools. She approached Good Earth Natural Foods owner/founder, Al Baylacq, [in photo above] who agreed to help jump-start this program by supporting lunches two days a week for the first 6 months, along with Milagro Foundation, an organization that continues to be an active supporter for both garden and kitchen programs.
The combined efforts of Good Earth, Cavallo Point chef, Milagro Foundation, Bayside Martin Luther King School chef, Shaun Dayton, and all the staff at BMLK, has enabled Conscious Kitchen to established a very successful nutritious, healthy pilot food program for past tw0 years.
Conscious Kitchen is now ready to replicate this program into a neighboring charter school in Sausalito called Willow Creek Academy to provide another program of nutritious foods soon. The plan is to have every school in this country use this model for providing healthy, nutritious lunches for children to model for their families and to sustain a healthier, active lifestyle and to become successful in their lives.
How does CVI fit in this mix? Several of our employees from the Larkspur Office have volunteered in BMLK kitchen, working side-by-side with Chef Shaun in preparing and serving lunches – Preston, Teresa, Lexin, Francisco and Charlotte. Additionally, CVI also donated to the kitchen with new potato/carrot peelers.
[Photo below: Charlotte Kobayashi at entry way of school]
Larkspur CVI office will soon set up a “Corporate Visions Volunteer Day” at Bayside to help in the garden and the kitchen by staggering our schedule for one whole day! Please check out website for Conscious Kitchen: http://www.teensturninggreen.org/the-conscious-kitchen/ [by Charlotte Kobayashi]
