Kitchen work is busy work: slicing, dicing, basting, baking, tasting. There is much to learn, including the deliciousness of fresh, natural foods, how to choose the best ingredients, plan nutritional menus and follow recipes correctly.  Learning to cook is an essential skill, but also stands as a metaphor for life – developing skills, planning, proper implementation…and living a healthy life. The Children’s Aid Society knows the recipe for teaching the fundamentals of cooking and nutrition, and we take part in several culinary educational programs.

“Fun Food, Smart Food” is a 12-week cooking and nutrition program for middle school-age youth (grades 5-8) empowering young people to learn cooking skills, develop a passion for healthful food and to benefit from healthful food choices. After-school classes, which meet at sites in Brooklyn and Harlem, help students learn hands-on cooking and nutrition lessons.

Utilizing fresh, healthful foods is the goal, and field trips to local greenmarkets and farms reinforce classroom work. Fresh Direct and Baby Buggy donate food to the program, which is a collaboration of the Department of Youth and Community Development and The Children’s Aid Society, in partnership with the Department of Health and Mental Hygiene, Department of Parks & Recreation, and Office of the Food Policy Coordinator. The program is scheduled to expand in fall 2009 to the South Bronx and Jamaica.

The Children’s Aid Society has also teamed up with the Food Network and Share Our Strength® with the opening of the first Good Food Garden in New York City at the Dunlevy Milbank Center in Harlem. Share our Strength tells us that one out of six kids in America is at risk of going hungry.  Good Food Gardens is a multigenerational learning opportunity, with toddlers, teens and seniors working side by side to grow vegetables, fruits and flowers. The produce is used in The Children’s Aid Society’s Go!Chefs program, which makes healthy cooking and eating both fun and accessible for young people, ages two through 21. (You’re never too young to learn prepare and enjoy “real food”). Take a tour with this blogger here.

We’ll look at all the Go!Chef  programs, including the Go!Kids early childhood obesity prevention program, in more detail in a future blog. Feed the body, feed the mind!

Photos: Lily Kesselman

Clients, providers and advocates gathered on the steps of New York’s City Hall on one of the sunniest days in May to shed some light on and rally support for restoration of city budget cuts to core human service programs serving New York’s most vulnerable populations – children, youth and elderly.

The Children’s Aid Society was represented by key staff members of its Saturday Program for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Children and Teens which takes place at the Rhinelander Children’s Center, as well as by the mother of one of the children who attend the program.

The Saturday Program is the only free program for Deaf and Hard of Hearing children and teens in New York City outside of a school. Isolation is a common feeling for Deaf young people. Children’s Aid’s program offers an opportunity for Deaf and Hard of Hearing youth to relate to peers outside of a school setting, build socialization skills and experience recreation, sports and field trips as well as attend workshops in relationship building, violence prevention and communication.

The Saturday Program, established in 1989, has always been funded by a mix of public and private support. The Saturday Program is one of the successful grantees of the Department of Youth and Community Development’s OST Option II funding. This funding is slated for elimination in the proposed City budget.

As the grandmother of a participant has written about the Program:

[My granddaughter] now realizes that her limitations are only the ones she imposes upon herself and that she really can do pretty much whatever she wants to do in her life. Although she has always been told this, the program made it a reality for her.