Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/22
Outputs
Target Audience:Native Youth Food Sovereignty Empowerment Project involves the students of the Two Eagle River School from 8th-12th grades. American Indian students and descendants. Changes/Problems:
Nothing Reported
What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?The experience in developing a facilitator manual that can be used by the grant partners, and disseminated and adapted as needed. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?The facilitator manual will be provided in hard and electronic copies for the grant project partners and hard copies will be housed and shared with future partners. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?
Nothing Reported
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
Developed and Completed Facilitator Manual. Will upload it if allowed within REEPORT. The following is the Project Summary and Table of Contents of the Facilitator manual and does not include the full document. Please contact Alana Bahe, if a copy of the facilitator manual is not able to be uploaded into this system. Native Youth Food Sovereignty Empowerment Project Curriculum Fall 2022 Developed in partnership with Salish Kootenai College - Community Health & Development and Two Eagle River School. Pablo, MT. This curriculum was developed from the National Institute of Food and Agriculutre (NIFA), USDA award project called Native Youth Food Sovereignty Empowerment Project (Award No. 2019-47002-29974). Project Summary: This curriculum was developed from the National Institute of Food and Agriculutre (NIFA), USDA award project called Native Youth Food Sovereignty Empowerment Project (Award No. 2019-47002-29974). The goal of the Native Youth Food Sovereignty Empowerment Project was to involve the students of the Two Eagle River School from 8th-12th grades, with hands-on activities that contribute to making better food choices. Project Partners: Salish Kootenai College - Community Health & Development (CHD) Department aims to encourage and grow awareness of healthy living practices through campus and community outreach. Two Eagle River School (TER) - Essential stakeholder to provide access to the 8th-12th grade students, facilities, development of the outdoor garden, and promote engagement of students and staff. Salish Kootenai College - Extension (SKCE) implements projects to address environmental and human health issues. SKCE provided expertise around plant growth, human nutrition, and environmental sustainability. Development: The curriculum developed went through multiple versions due to COVID19 impacts to instruction, TER guidance, and tribal oversight in response to COVID19 mitigation. The project partners are proud to share this version of the curriculum with TER and for additional interested parties. This curriculum was truly grown from the prospective of connection, collaboration, and skill building. In years leading up to finalizing this curriculum: Year 1 - Relationship building, seeking TER guidance on project activities, and curriculum development. Meeting with TER staff - teachers, superintendent, TER board members and school cook. Researching and drafting lesson plans. Implementation of 1st version of lessons. *March 2020, all activities stopped due to COVID19 restrictions. Year 2 - Revision of curriculum and continued COVID impacts. Online delivery of curriculum starting in Febuary of 2021. Outdoor classroom development. Year 3 - Finalizing curriculum, facilitator manual development, and implementation activities. 25 lessons were developed by incorporating Food Sovereignty, Harvest Time, Community, Nutrition, Wellness, and Gardening sections. Each section has between 4-5 lessons. Completed a Facilitator Manual with supportive materials for TER, CHD and future interested parties to use for implementation. During Year Two, TER and CHD along with help from various project team members came to a realization, that it may be helpful to develop a logic model. COVID19 impacted many project activities, and the logic model provides a visual representation of all the work that had been completed. The below logic model provided a spark to the project team to continue moving forward. Acknowledgements: This project would not have been possible without many people's dedication, commitment, interest, passion, and support. The following people have made contributions to the development of this curriculum so that it can be shared and ulitlized in the future. Thank you. Alana Bahe, Rodney Bird, Brandie Buckless, Johnson Caye, Vernon Christopher, Virgil Dupuis, Sandi Ovitt, Vicki Peterson (In Memoriam), Tammy Sandberg, and Jami Schall. Introduction to the Native Youth Food Sovereignty Empowerment Project Curriculum The following lessons were developed to incorporate Food Sovereignty, Harvest Time, Community, Nutrition, Wellness, and Garden. Sections build on the previous knowledge learned and have the students engage in interactive activities. Facilitators can reference the following descriptions to assist with implementation of each lesson. Food Sovereignty: [Food Sovereignty is the people's right to have a sustainably produce food that is safe, nutritious, and appropriate] First Nations Development Institute (2020, November, 6). Food Sovereignty, is the basis of this curriculum. Growing students awareness of their homelands and the resources available locally, builds their understanding of how they can be participate and learn skills in making better food choices. Harvest Time: Participating in an outdoor garden connects this curriculum to what the students are learning. They can be involved in the decision making about what to grow, harvesting the garden produce, interactive taste testing, and maybe even incorporating some of the foods into the school meals. Community: Connections to place, people, and culture showed up for this curriculum very early on. Therefore, there are lessons and activities built into this curriculum to help the students understand more about their surroundings and how they can play a part in their community. Nutrition: Another section of the curriculum is Nutrition, lessons in this section include learning about nutrients the body needs to thrive, taste testing and making healthy snacks. Nutrition education can be shared at this age in a fun and engaging way to assist with making better food choices. Wellness: There are many dimensions of wellness (phyisical, spiritual, environmental, social, emotional, etc.). This section incorporates lessons to assist with teaching and understanding wellness. Additionally, there are lessons that ulitize activities about traditional healing practices that are used to promote healing and well-being. Garden: This part of the curriculum immerses the students in interactive learning by visiting the outdoor classroom. Students get to learn how to plant and care for a garden, pollinators, Native plants and many other activities. Students, can then see how the garden has grown through the summer when they return for the next school year. Table of Contents Food Sovereignty Introduction to Food Sovereignty Harvest Time 2. Getting to Know the Garden 3. Make a Meal from the Garden 4. Harvesting Herbs 5. Preserving Foods - Dehydrator 6. Discovering Pumpkins Community 7. Sense of Belonging - Pt I 7.1 Sense of Belonging - Pt II 8. Food Access in our Community 9. Community Resources 10. Culture, Storytelling, and Traditional Foods Nutrition 11. Simply MYPLATE 12. Nutrient Knowledge 13. Nutrition Facts 14. Healthy Snacks Wellness 15. Discovering Wellness 16. Reducing Stress 17. Physical Dimension of Wellness 18. Zentangle - Meditation through Art Gardening 19. Herb Gardens for Indoors 20. Bee a Friend to Pollinators 21. Native Plants and Culture 22. Early Planting in the Greenhouse 23. Compost and Garden Pests 24. Planting the Garden Resources Logic Model References Note: Facilitator Manual will beuploaded if allowed in the system.
Publications
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Progress 09/01/20 to 08/31/21
Outputs
Target Audience:Native Youth Food Sovereignty Empowerment Project involves the students of the Two Eagle River School from 8th-12th grades. American Indian students and descendants. Changes/Problems:Even though, the nation is 17 months into the COVID-19 pandemic the project is still facing challenges. Specifically with the resurgence of the Delta variant. As such, the Community Health team is committed to support this project for the remainder of the grant cycle and with No Cost Extention approval will be able to call this project a success. The project experienced a primary employee turnover and was able to hire the Health Education Coordinator in February of 2021. This person hit the grounding and has not looked back. They are able to support the garden lead and has really contributed to this project and the progress that has occured, since their hire. Challenges: Keeping 8th graders engaged virtuallly. Building relationships with 8th has been difficult and is also essentail for project movement. Students have experience isolation, food insecurity, safety issues, family covid-19 losses, and other social determinants of health that have significantly contributed to the uptake of the lessons. Finding creative ways to get hands on projects to students at their home and then getting them to turn them back in. No Two Eagle staff had very limited access to the school grounds and therefore, limited ability to assist garden lead during COVID19 restrictions. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided? Project staff learned to use Google Classroom in order to work with Two Eagle River Students through their virutally learning. Project staff and partners attened the MT Farm to School Summit where they learned many helpful ideas regarding, nutrition education, harvest of the month, school garden committees and uses for other subjects, sourcing local foods, etc. Summer Staff were recieved Food Handler training and CPR training. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Facebook updates are provide regarding the NativeYouth Food Empowerment Project. Also, in August of 2021 an update meeting was provided to Two Eagle River Staff at their inservice regarding the garden expansion, and opportunities for teachers (regardless of subject) to access the outdoor classroom and to start an interest in developing a garden club and committee. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals? Continue to provide capacity building assistance in various ways, establish a garden club/committee to assit with buyin and to connect the outdoor classroom to the school and is community. Revisit the original goals with the project team and assess their importance to decide whether they need to be adapted. Further develop, and finalize lesson materials; with the goal of providing a Facilator manual for Two Eagle staff to continued to ultize and adapt as needed. Continue to review the direction of project and look for Two Eagle staff to further develop their vision of the outdoor classroom and it's use for the Two Eagle River community.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
*Our project partners, being a BIA school met virtually the entire school year of 2020-2021. Therefore this significantly affected the projects reach. With personnel turnover, hiring a new project staff, the program was still able to maintain communication and committment to project and started taking steps to reengage the project in February of 2021. Key Strategic Action 1: Support informal education to increase food and agricultural literacy of youth and adults Objective 1: Introduce at least 75% of TERS students to food varieties and hydroponic growing techniques each quarter of the school year. Activity 1.1: Healthy Food Lessons - Weekly one-hour hands-on presentations about food choices with food samples Inprogress - This was postponed, due to COVID restrictions and was started back up in February of 2021 through lesson development. This occurred enitirely virtually. Activity 1.2: Installation & maintenance of grow wall in school cafeteria Unmet - Two Eagle River Asked to revisit this when the school went back in person. *School resumed in person as of August 2021. Activity 1.3: Micro-green eco-system installation & maintenance Unmet - Two Eagle River Asked to revisit this when the school went back in person. *School resumed in person as of August 2021. Key Strategic Action 2: Build science-based capability in people to engage audiences and enable informed decision-making. Objective 2: Engage at least 10 TERS students in hands-on food growing projects, within the first project year. Activity 2.1: Recruit high school students for Food Sovereignty Club (FSC) to be facilitated by SKC staff In progress - In Fall of 2020, the program experienced some personnel turnover. It took 6 months to hire a new Health Education Coordinator that was 1 FTE on the project starting in the middle of February 2021. This deliverable was discussed with project partners and was asked to wait due to COVID-19 limitations. All students were not allowed on the premise and coursework had to be completed and offered virtually only. Per our partners request this activity will be revisited in year three, with no cost extension approval. Activity 2.2: Involve FSC students in grow wall installation and maintenance and micro-green production and greenhouse utilization Unmet - This deliverable was discussed with project partners and was asked to wait due to COVID-19 limitations. All students were not allowed on the premise and coursework had to be completed and offered virtually only. Therefore this did not allow for any meetings and getting students engaged was already challenging for regular coursework. However, we were able to support project partners to expand the garden, the sprinkler and hose connection, grower starters in the greenhouse, weed and thin out beds with help of one Two Eagle River Student the, Garden Lead, and the Health Education Coordinator. Activity 2.3: Offer two FSC members paid internships through to work with SKC summer program which will include preparing breakfast and lunch for children participants Unmet - Plan to incorporate into year three with No Cost Extension Approval. Activity 2.4: FSC intern presentations at end of summer Dinner in the Garden Unmet - Plan to incorporate into year three with No Cost Extension Approval. Activity 2.5: Begin initial adaptation of "Advancing Healthy & Sustainable Diets for All," curriculum Inprogress - SKC Extension is still working with another entity on theri curriculum. Therefore the Community Health project staff continue to develop lessons for this project. Thus far, 18 lessons have been developed with a goal of between 20- 30 lessons that will be developed into a facilitator manual for Two Eagle River to continue to use and adapt as needed. Successes- Students started looking at assignments and working on them Greenhouse was cleaned up and moved. Garden starts were planted in the greenhouse and office space. Raised beds were weeded and ready to plant. Five raised beds were built and added to the garden space. One bed was dedicated to only native pollinators! Another bed was for growing the Three Sisters (corn, beans, and squash). A seating area was started and will continue to be added to. This additional creates an inviting outdoor space for other classes to use. The Board allowed for a couple of dayts the teachers could meet with students in the community. The garden lead and the Health Education Coordinator were able to hand out strawberry plants to students from the school gardens that were thinned out. This was a great opportunity to meet students for the first time in person. May 2021. The Community Health facebook page has been a success with weekly posts on our progress with the food sovereignty project. We upload pictures and health recipes to let others and the studens see what we are doing. We have received many vies as the garden continues to flourish.
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Progress 09/01/19 to 08/31/20
Outputs
Target Audience:**The previous field would not allow us to proceed in this report without adding an FTE to the student role. Please note, that during this reporting period there were no students working on this project* Students of the Two Eagle River School from 8th-12th grades, American Indian students and descendants. Changes/Problems:As mentioned prior, COVID-19 has significantly impacted the Native Youth Food Sovereignty Empowerment Project. Due to the CSKT (Tribe) and SKC limited work from home mandate; CHD staff was not able to meet project efforts as expected. TER also moved to an online delivery with their priority being their students. CHD has maintained communication, but has not been able to fully re-engage in the project efforts. We have provided greenhouse materials for TER and have discussed a work day at their site to assist with preparation of the greenhouse, raised beds, and tilling the ground for spring of 2021. Additionally, on top of the COVID-19 impacts we have lost our primary CHD staff person for this project, due to personnel turnover. CHD is currently advertising for this position with hopes that someone will be hired by the end of the year. What opportunities for training and professional development has the project provided?One CHD staff person was pursuing their Associates of Art's - Health Promotion Practices at Salish Kootenai College. How have the results been disseminated to communities of interest?Meetings and communication has been ongoing, between CHD staff and TER project members. What do you plan to do during the next reporting period to accomplish the goals?There virtual shift has be quite the learning curve for many. CHD is working to develop shorter virtual lessons that TER staff will provide access to for their students. Due to the significant impacts that COVID-19 has had on project activities, CHD plans to continue project efforts per guidance from TER, SKC, and the CSKT (Tribe). As such, focusing project efforts on finalizing the currculum is a major priority. Also, due the COVID-19 limitations, this provides an opportunity to focus on TER greenhouse and working with TER representative. CHD will likely have to modify the original activities in response to the COVID-19 impacts.
Impacts
What was accomplished under these goals?
In March of 2020, all project activities were significantly impacted due to COVID-19. Additionally, in early March the Confederated Salish & Kootenai Tribes passed a Stay at home/Shelter in Place order. As such, Salish Kootenai College (SKC) followed suit and also, went to a limited work from home status. Our partner in this project Two Eagle River, like many public schools went to a virtual dissemination of there education. At this time, our project activities stopped. Additionally, SKC implemented further health safety guidelines allowing no in-person activities through the summer of 2020. CHD staff continued communicating with TER throughout this time with hopes to reengage project efforts in the Fall of 2020. TER is still no allowing any in person school. Key Strategic Action 1: Support informal education to increase food and agricultural literacy of youth and adults Objective 1: Introduce at least 75% of TERS students to food varieties and hydroponic growing techniques each quarter of the school year. Activities Milestones Person(s) Responsible Timeline Progress Activity 1.1: Healthy Food Lessons - Weekly one-hour hands-on presentations about food choices with food samples 10 lessons per quarter Training Coordinator Fall through Spring (August through May) In progress. Eight lessons were developed and implemented starting in January of 2020. This activity was paused due to the COVID-19 Closures. In August of 2020, discussions resumed regarding developing shorter virtual lessons. Activity 1.2: Installation & maintenance of grow wall in school cafeteria Purchase of wall and set-up Training Coordinator/Consultant Fall through Spring Incomplete. Meetings were held in Fall of 2019 and again in Winter of 2020 regarding the grow wall with Two Eagle River Staff. There is interest in the grow wall and concerns about where it will be housed, the size and now additional health safety concerns due to COVID-19. CHD staff are considering housing the grow wall at their office located next door to TER with hopes the TER will bring into their facility at some point during the project. Activity 1.3: Micro-green eco-system installation & maintenance Purchase and set-up of system Training Coordinator/Consultant Fall through Spring Incomplete. Same outcome as Activity 1.2. See above. Key Strategic Action 2: Build science-based capability in people to engage audiences and enable informed decision-making. Objective 2: Engage at least 10 TERS students in hands-on food growing projects, within the first project year. Activities Milestones Person(s) Responsible Timeline Progress Activity 2.1: Recruit high school students for Food Sovereignty Club (FSC) to be facilitated by SKC staff Engage at least 10-15 students to join school club - to be shown through membership list and meeting agendas Training Coordinator Fall through Spring (August through May) Incomplete. During year one meetings and interest in the project was collected starting in the Fall of 2019. There is an interest in having a FSC, and there is more support in the lessons at this time. CHD staff is focusing on building a strong relationship with our partner TER. Additionally, COVID-19 insignificantly affected most project activities. Activity 2.2: Involve FSC students in grow wall installation and maintenance and micro-green production and greenhouse utilization Student generated maintenance schedules Training Coordinator/Consultant and FSC students Director Quarterly throughout the year Incomplete. Student engagement has posed a challenge for CHD staff. CHD is considering focusing the TER greenhouse in year two. See Activitiy 1.2 for more detail. COVID-19 has impacted project activities. Activity 2.3: Offer two FSC members paid internships through to work with SKC summer program which will include preparing breakfast and lunch for children participants Internship documentation and schedules for summer Training Coordinator and FSC students June through August - Summer months during the summer program Incomplete. Due to COVID-19 this activity was not available during year one. Activity 2.4: FSC intern presentations at end of summer Dinner in the Garden Agenda, and sign-in sheets for Dinner in the Garden participants Training Coordinator and FSC students End of Summer Dinner in the Garden Incomplete. Due to COVID-19 this activity was not available during year one. Activity 2.5: Begin initial adaptation of "Advancing Healthy & Sustainable Diets for All," curriculum Adaption planning agenda, Meeting notes and summaries Training Coordinator Director October through May SKC Extension is working with another entity on their curriculum through another project. Therefore, CHD is developing lessons covering the four topic areas of Food Sovereignty, Wellness, Nutrition, and Gardening. fghdfghfg
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