On September 30, the NC Farm to Early Care and Education (Farm to ECE) Initiative hosted the third learning session of the NC Farm to ECE Collaborative virtually. Typically, the final learning session of each Collaborative offers participants a face-to-face opportunity to celebrate their successes, reconnect with other teams, and exchange new ideas. These learning sessions also typically conclude with rounds of “mini-sessions,” where each team presents a new idea or strategy that they have tested, and participants learn innovative strategies from other teams. This year, however, has been anything but “typical”!
The Breakthrough Series Collaborative’s flexible approach helped facilitate the switch from a face-to-face Collaborative to a virtual format. The third learning session opened with a “coffee and celebration” period. With music playing in the background, participants spent about 15 minutes watching slides of all of the teams implementing Farm to ECE over the past year. There were definitely some teary eyes among the participants watching, as they were overcome with a bittersweet sense of both what they have lost and what they were still able to accomplish during this pandemic year.
After the slideshow, participants went into their affinity breakout rooms for smaller group check-ins. The affinity group breakout sessions offered participants the opportunity to discuss their next steps for building on their Farm to ECE foundation in order to sustain this work.
The highlight of the day was the virtual mini-sessions. Teams adapted their “mini-session” presentations to a virtual format, and provided an honest portrayal of their work during the pandemic. Eleven teams representing 14 counties (Chatham, Durham, Franklin, Vance, Warren, Guilford, Lee, Martin, Pitt, Robeson, Rowan, Union, Wake, and Wayne) displayed resilience and ingenuity during a difficult year. They showed how they have spent this year feeding healthy food to hungry children, engaging families in gardening, teaching children how to cook food from different cultures, developing an innovative “seed wall” as a teaching tool, bringing a mobile farmers market to families, and teaching children where fruits and vegetables come from.
To give one example (although it’s so hard to pick just one!), the Robeson County team showed pictures of church and community members coming together to build a fence around the new garden boxes at the child care center. Once the fence was completed, children and teachers began exploring their gardens every day and checking on their new irrigation system.
Collaborative participants were honored to have a special guest in attendance, the First Lady of NC Kristin Cooper, whose signature issue is childhood hunger. After the presentations, she shared the following message with participants: “Keep on doing what you are doing, it was very interesting to hear about the different things you are doing across the state. This is all wonderful! We are so impressed!”
Learn more about NC Farm to Early Care and Education.