Since 2008, Vetri Community Partnership has helped schools, organizations & communities bring healthy school lunch and nutrition education programs to their students and families.
During the 2017-2018 school year, we were proud to partner with more sites and engage with more children and adults than ever before.
I was impressed with your ability to maintain a fun environment while educating our students and I truly believe they walked away with a different perspective on vegetables and healthy eating.
— Taschet, Mobile Teaching Kitchen program partner
Eat. Educate. Empower.
It's common for parents to put their kids in after-school activities like sports, but this cooking program is a different type of team activity – it's a collaborative, communal creating of something. I think that years from now, students will reflect back on this experience and have confidence in their ability to cook. They'll be able to look at a recipe and think "I can do that."
— Joanna, teacher at a Vetri Cooking Lab site
'17-'18 Highlights:
We expanded our programs to new sites to serve more children and families.
Children who are at the highest risk for obesity — low-income urban youth — consume more than half of their daily calories at school, making it the perfect setting to make sure those calories are quality and set the foundation for healthier lives. That's why we brought our programs to over 75 schools and community centers. Nearly 1,000 students were enrolled in our after-school programs — Vetri Cooking Lab and My Daughter's Kitchen. Our staff and dedicated volunteers delivered approximately 2,860 hours of quality culinary and nutrition education.
We made more than double the number of community visits with our Mobile Teaching Kitchen.
Our Mobile Teaching Kitchen launched in October 2016 and was almost instantly booked to capacity. This year, our donors helped us purchase a new truck and we were able to make 212 community visits. 12,974 children and adults engaged in the Mobile Teaching Kitchen's hands-on cooking demonstrations and healthy food tastings. We also embarked on new partnerships with Philabundance, PriceRite, Virtua Health Services, and more.
We developed new culinary and nutrition education curriculum.
In addition to adding sites to our programs, our culinary and education experts concentrated on creating new recipes and curriculum to teach important cooking and nutrition lessons. The Eatiquette 360 program now includes in-class cooking experiences for students and classes for caregivers. Our Vetri Cooking Lab program now has two years' worth of tested curriculum primed for new schools and sites.
What Our Participants are Saying:
I feel like I opened a new set of tastebuds!
— Jaylen, 5th grader enrolled in Vetri Cooking Lab
I liked to shred the zucchini and it smelled good while I was shredding it up. It looks really good and tastes really good.
— Jordan, 6th grade participant in Eatiquette in the Classroom
I can not thank you enough for all you have done this year. My son has tried foods that I couldn't get him to eat even though he used to eat them all when he was little. He has so much fun and looks forward to cooking every week!
— Bridget, mother of a student in Vetri Cooking Lab
Solely due to the [Mobile Teaching Kitchen], I've learned to cook beets, Swiss chard, parsnips, turnip, and a whole variety of other vegetables that I'd never even tasted before until I was offered a sample (and probably would've never tried otherwise!).
— Kate, Mobile Teaching Kitchen participant
