Home-cooked food, hands-on learning, healthy living and modular design are all potent buzzwords. Through the Charlie Cart Project, they can be put to real social use. Both what we learn and what we eat as children affects how we develop, and our young habits can set us up for success or failure. To help build healthier skills around nutrition and inquiry, this project aims to take cooking directly into classrooms, bringing healthy food and tactile learning to kids in multiple cities. The project's current aim is to produce more of their modular "Charlie Cart" prototype and get them into use in public schools. The prototype, already tested in classrooms, incorporates space for food preparation and cooking into a single mobile unit, with storage, a full set of tools, a manual sink, counter area, oven and stove. The compact station would cut down on wasted resources and increase flexibility and expand cooking programs into multiple classes per school.
This project was spearheaded by Carolyn Federman, who has worked on Edible Schoolyard projects for nearly 15 years, and Brian Dougherty, founder of Celery Design. Combining Carolyn's education and programming experience and Brian's experience in product design, they came up with a simple solution to the hassle and expense of bringing cooking into standard classrooms... and even outside!
Partnering with the likes of OXO and Williams Sonoma ensures that each cart comes equipped with high quality tools for instructors and students. Pilot programs have already been set up in three public school locations across California, and they hope to take what they learn there and expand the program across the country in 2015.
In addition to a tested design and programming chops the project has stunning, all-star foodie buy-in. The Advisory Board is beyond solid, with members like Alice Waters (Grande Dame of the slow food movement and owner of the groundbreaking restaurant Chez Panisse), Michael Pollan (the author of such books as The Omnivore's Dilemma and In Defense Of Food), and Harold McGee (food science writing pioneer). Oversight by such ecologically, socially and culinarily minded thinkers can only be a boon.
As someone with big love for "real food" and natural sciences, I'm proud to say I learned a lot of lasting lessons about healthy cooking, food systems, and biology through my elementary school's vegetable garden. And as someone who hopes that our faulty food systems, school systems and health systems can improve, this program looks like a great one to support.
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