It’s tough to expect kids to have an active and healthy lifestyle when we’re serving them a rectangular piece of cheese pizza, some sugary canned fruit cocktail, a cookie, and a carton of milk for lunch five days a week. Yet that’s exactly what a lot of schools are still doing. (At least in the U.S. — check out these fascinating images of school lunches around the world if you have some spare time.) Georgia Organics is changing that with its Farm to School program, and yesterday, The James M. Cox Foundation announced that it would be providing a $250,000 grant to help bring healthy food to Georgia’s students.



Farm to School (or F2S as the cool kids call it) is a nationwide project that was started in Georgia by Georgia Organics back in 2007. Since then, they’ve implemented the program in more than 30 school districts across the state. In those districts, kids are not only eating more fruits and veggies, they’re also learning about composting, gardening, nutrition, recycling, and farming. Knowing what’s what when it comes to growing food is especially important in a state where agribusiness is the leading industry, bringing about $71.1 billion to the economy every year.

By the time Georgia Organics has finished its three-year fundraising campaign, they expect to impact 900,000 kids across the state. The grant from the Cox Foundation will help with that mission. “A successful Farm to School program depends on many partners, and the James M. Cox Foundation is playing an important role in our expansion,” said Georgia Organics’ Executive Director Alice Rolls.

See also:

· Talking GMOs, Affordable Organic Food & Veggie-Lovin’ Kids With Michael Wall of Georgia Organics [WellATL]