Girish Jayant

• Researched and created a cookbook for the crop of the week program of the Buffalo Public Schools that is both nutritious by encouraging healthy eating habits and culturally inclusive recognizing Buffalo’s newest community members
• Developed a questionnaire for teachers to provide feedback and recommendations on the crop of the week program
• Represented Grassroots Gardens in a working group for Buffalo’s Farm to School program linking schools with local farms
• Researched best practices from other community garden organizations and Farm to School initiatives across the country
• Created a toolkit of curriculum based on the Farm to School policy for leaders of school gardens to use

"Participating in this program has greatly encouraged me to get more politically involved. I don’t think I will ever run for office (though my thoughts may change) but I’m much more willing to contact my local representatives about issues important to me. Finally, I have learned that community engaged service learning is an incredibly powerful tool for actually developing solutions to problems your city faces. Getting to work with Grassroots Gardens and walk around the city let me see the vacant housing problem Buffalo faces first hand and all the different ways community and school gardens can help solve it while improving other aspects of community life. I would never have truly learned as much in a classroom. So even though grassroots level activism is an unpredictable and sometimes unreliable process, when it does get results, they can be quite beautiful."

"When the Harvest of the Month cooking guide is adopted by the school system it will have an impact on all students who receive their meals. It will also help connect New Americans culturally to the school systems by providing meals prepared in a familiar way."

Greg Wilder, School Garden Coordinator,

Grassroots Gardens