Supporting Food Security in Central Oregon

Nourishing education starts down in the belly at the Waldorf School of Bend (WSB). Walk through the halls of a Waldorf School and one can usually smell something delicious wafting through the air. Teachers and parents here love cultivating a deep relationship to one’s food; growing it in the school garden, kneading bread dough, packing a hearty homemade meal, to blessing a meal with a song of gratitude.

While we are so fortunate to have this relationship to our meals, 1 in 5 children in Deschutes County are food insecure. This means they are not sure from where their next meal will come, or if it will be enough to curb a day’s worth of hunger. High Desert Farm and Food Alliance (HDFFA) is a non-profit that supports a healthy food and network in Central Oregon. NeighborImpact, our regional food bank works to fight hunger in Central Oregon through distributing food to hunger relief agencies in Deschutes, Crook, and Jefferson County as well as the Confederated Tribes of Warm Springs.

The first grade at WSB collaborated with these two non-profits to help bag locally grown apples and carrots which will then be distributed by NeighborImpact to their 50+ partner agencies. The carrots were deemed too “ugly” to sell by the grocery stores and apples were gleaned from a small orchard in Prineville. The first graders (in record time) bagged 1,187 pounds of fresh produce which would have gone into the farm compost, or regretfully into the landfill. The kids had the adults beat with how fast and thorough they were!

It felt downright good in the belly and the heart to help make eating more than just that. I am so proud to see young WSB children already making a difference in the world.

To find out how to help visit: https://hdffa.org/ or http://www.neighborimpact.org/services/food/

–written by Meghan Allsopp, WSB 1st grade teacher