Source: PFC social impact advisors
Good Food Great Kids-Making Practice and Policy Work for Farm to Early Childcare & Education
According to Harvard University’s Center on the Developing Child, “The science of child development now helps us to see healthy development as a causal chain— policies and programs across the public and private sectors affect the capacities of caregivers and communities to strengthen three foundations of healthy development: stable, responsive relationships; safe, supportive environments; and appropriate nutrition.” These foundations impact physiological mechanisms that have lifelong impacts on cognitive development, physical growth, and behavioral outcomes.3
Report Purpose
It is with this spirit in mind that we will explore opportunities for learning from and leveraging policy development and implementation to continue to create a base of knowledge that can help practitioners from across sectors build bridges to support better health and educational opportunities for vulnerable children and their families. The following policy overview, developed in partnership with the National Farm to School Network and the BUILD Initiative, is intended both to share a broad spectrum of existing information about various experiences in building farm to ECE-supportive policies and begin to point out how forging greater connections between current policies and the work of farm to ECE can benefit early childcare centers, children, and families.
The Good Food, Great Kids* case studies are part of a series developed by pfc Social Impact Advisors for public use and dissemination via the book Good, Evil, Wicked: The Art, Science, and Business of Giving (Stanford University Press 2017), among other publicly accessible media. Information presented was gathered through desk research and 53 interviews with practitioners, policy and issue-area experts, funders, and other local and national stakeholders in the farm to early childcare and education and farm to school sectors. *This report borrows the phrase good food from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, which defines good food as food that is “healthy, sustainable, fair, and affordable.”