Apply for Farm to School and Early Childhood Empowerment Grant Programs

The purpose of these grants is to help schools and early childhood education providers enrich their students’ educational experiences, maintain relationships with agricultural producers, improve the health of Vermont’s children, and enhance Vermont’s agricultural environment through Farm-to-School and Early Childhood Education. Helping build and strengthen programs. economy. From farm to school, early childhood education is a broad term that refers to a variety of initiatives that help address issues related to nutrition, agriculture, and community participation. From farm to school, each early childhood program is unique. These grants are intended to help recipient organizations build programs that reflect their values ​​and respond to their needs.

Areas of focus

• Create a farm-to-school or farm-to-infancy action plan and timeline.
• Creating Farm to School and Early Childhood Rubrics
• Develop and maintain project budget
• Connect and coordinate with technical support service providers
• Strengthen relationships between the organization and the community to increase project success.
• Consulting on topics such as organizing farm visits, classroom activities, curriculum development, and connecting organizations with the larger agricultural community.

funds information

• The total amount of funding available for this grant cycle is $150,000.
• Minimum and Maximum Rewards
  • Total number of students/children: 0 – 30
  • Reward amount: $5,000
  • Total number of students/children: 31 – 100
  • Compensation amount: $7,000
  • Total number of students/children: 101 – 300
  • Reward amount: $10,000
  • Total number of students/children: 301 +
  • Award amount: $15,000

result

• By the end of the grant period, each recipient will have:
  • Formally establish a functional project team
  • Develop an action plan to guide the work of the project team.
  • Grant-backed financial and technical support was fully utilized to implement the action plan.

qualifying activity

• Meal Program Support:
  • Examples of training topics include, but are not limited to:
    • Start or expand federal child nutrition programs
    • Expanding participation in student meal programs
    • Long-term planning and forecasting
    • Implement meal service best practices to make meals more accessible to children.
    • Implementation or expansion of free summer meals and after-school meals
    • Identifying alternative methods for providing meals and snacks when federal nutrition programs are not feasible.
    • Exploring creative partnerships to support meal programs and food access programs, including 3SquaresVT and WIC
• Local food sourcing:
  • Areas of support include but are not limited to:
    • identify local farmers and producers;
    • Navigating procurement regulations;
    • Local purchase tracking, etc.
    • Using CSA stocks,
    • Vermont Regional Food Incentive Grant Application (K-12 only);
    • forward contract
• Curriculum Integration:
  • Topics covered in curriculum support include, but are not limited to:
    • Food and Food Systems, Agriculture and Environment, Nutrition
    • We provide beneficiary schools with connections to resources, tools, partners, organizations, and more based on the beneficiary’s identified needs and specific tasks.
    • Provide virtual support and consultation to individual beneficiary schools as needed.
    • Supporting educators on specific farm-to-school, early childhood topics or initiatives
• School garden:
  • Training will cover important aspects of a successful garden project, as well as information on how to integrate gardens into comprehensive farm-to-school or early childhood programs. On-site technical assistance visits may include nutritional programming or hands-on workshops related to horticultural topics such as general garden planning, seed starting, creating pollinator habitat, on-site composting, and more.
• Alternative Professional Development Opportunities:
  • If desired, recipients may substitute a variety of professional development opportunities. Alternative activities will not be funded through the support services component of this grant, but may be paid for using the grant. Alternative activities must receive prior approval from the VAAFM Grant Program Administrator.

Eligibility Criteria

• The following organizations may apply for this competitive grant:
  • Vermont Licensed Early Childhood Education Center
  • A group of three or more registered family child care (FCCH) providers (groups may include a mix of FCCH and center-based programs)
  • Independent Schools Participating in Federal Child Nutrition Programs
  • individual public schools
  • A supervisory union (SU) or school district on behalf of a public school or consortium of schools.

For more information, please visit: Vermont Agency of Agriculture, Food and Markets.