Rethinking School Lunch Community Discussion Follow-Up

Thanks to all who braved the cold to attend the Rethinking School Lunch event at the Harwood Arts Center on Friday with Zenbia Barlow from the Center for EcoLiteracy. It turned out to be an awesome meeting with a large and diverse group (I think we had over 40 people representing anti-hunger, anti-obesity, pro-gardening, local food, school food, classroom instruction and more). Zenobia was literally blown-away by the turn-out and by the existing work and potential for collaboration!

At the meeting we agreed everyone in the room was interested in having ACHIEVE, the New Mexico Collaboration to End Hunger, the APS Growing Gardens Team, PANAC (the Physical Activity and Nutrition Advisory Council for APS), and the Agricultural Collaborative at MRCOG co-sponsor a follow-up event when the legislative session is over in order to vision work around developing "Rethinking School Lunch New Mexico" or a "School Outside the Box" initiative of some sort.

We are actually incredibly "ripe" in terms of all of the great work already going on in the community, including some of the initiatives at APS (like the fruit and vegetable tastings), but we now need to figure out if we can come together to envision something more coherent. The five co-sponsoring groups will meet and will be in touch regarding the follow-up meeting.