FoodCorps is working to improve our food system, one school at a time.

Grantee Profile

FoodCorps is a new nonprofit organization whose mission is to empower a new generation of leaders to help end childhood obesity by connecting vulnerable kids to healthy food. To pursue this work, FoodCorps is launching a national AmeriCorps program that will recruit young leaders for a year of service in high-obesity, limited-resource communities. The organization will apply a public service model proven effective by City Year, AmeriCorps, and Teach for America to the pressing problems of healthy-food access, childhood obesity and diet-related disease. In early 2011, leveraging significant federal funds, FoodCorps will begin recruiting a first class of 79 young leaders for a year-long term of public service improving food education and access in high-obesity, limited-resource schools in ten states. Working under the direction of local partner organizations, service members will build and tend school gardens, expand farm-to-cafeteria sourcing of healthy food, and conduct nutrition education in communities of need.

About Our Grants

The Foundation’s 2011 grant is the first installment of a three-year, $300,000 investment in FoodCorps, a national organization that’s transforming school food through the hands and minds of emerging leaders. Woodcock funds will support FoodCorps as it recruits its second cohort of service members and deploys them to high-need communities throughout the country.