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Seeds in the Middle is a registered 501c3 charity

 

 

In the News

See our upcoming events!

Reserve your fresh food box!

(Thursdays) Flatbush Fresh Market @IS240/381, 1-5:30 pm Sign up

(Fridays) Bococa Fresh Market at Wanisa Home Kitchen, 3-5 pm (free cocktail or spring rolls) Sign up

(Fridays) Flatbush Fresh Market at Midwood Flats
5-7 pm (free cocktail or slider) Sign up

Want to Volunteer?


Join us! Opportunties Here!

Volunteers

 

Do you think Healthy Eating is a Civil Right?


Then sign the petition: NYC DOE, please approve the farmstand for PS 284 in Brownsville and share.

See this wonderful video of our Hip2B Healthy Ambassadors at PS 284.


Hip2B Healthy Students Achieve Higher


Ambassador Photo Guess what? Our Hip2B Healthy Market Ambassadors in 2012 outscored students across their district and NYC in standardized tests! Do you think running a market, accounting, analyzing food labels to know what to sell, and writing letters and reading about food justice had anything to do with that? Or a great teacher?

 

Compare!

 

Ms.Fearon's Hip2B Healthy 4th graders scored at or above grade level:

 

Subject Hip2B Dist. 17 NYC
Math:"3,4" 85% 43.5% 65.7%
Math:"4" 27% 16.1% 29.1%
ELA:"3,4" 69% 49.3% 52.4%
Science:"3,4" 96.2% 77% N/A

 

Wait! Did you see that 27% scored "4" in math! That is 27% scoring above grade level! Congrats to their teacher. Ms. Sara Ann Fearon. Yes, it's Hip2B Healthy.

 

Hungry? Get your fruit on!

Flatbush Fresh Food Box/Farmstand

Weekly outside IS 240/ IS 381

 

Come try out fresh fruits and vegetables at the Flatbush Fresh Food Box/Farmstand every Thursday outside at IS 240 and IS 381, 1-5:30p. Fresh drinks coming soon! Who says you can't get a nutritious snack for as little as 50 cents? Students/parents - forget the junk food at the corner stores! Support youth and your community promoting fresh food and your health in your neighborhood. EBT/SNAP accepted. Thank you, donors!

 

Check out our photos

 

 

 

We're on Heritage Radio Network!

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Hear our kids tell you all about our how to run a business where youth empower their peers to eat well.

We're on the radio, not once, but twice.

Here is the on-site story.

Thank you, Heritage Radio Network.

 

 

Students Help Students Build Gardens!

 

girl with lettuce plant

Hip2B Healthy Schools don't waste any school days. That's why we built gardens together. PS 221 second graders helped their friends at PS 161 build a garden. Volunteers helped Ms. Sarria at IS 240 clean out her garden for Martin Luther King Day of Service 2020. GJS 284 painted their garden boxes and will be starting to grow soon. Stay tuned. Thank you, volunteers, and Home Depot for your generous assistance!

 

 

Solid Rock Supports Hip2B Healthy Students!

chef Elle

In June, a mission of youth and their parents from Florida, called Solid Rock, stormed into Crown Heights and helped Hip2B Healthy students build gardens, cook nutritiously with Chef Elle Siimone, make artful signage and play ball - all to get healthy.

 

See photos of our chef night here

 

Hip2B Healthy Farmstand Fundraiser Rocked!

 

little girl

Did you know PS 221 offers Metropolitan Opera Guild Urban Voices chorus, keyboard for all students k-2 and ballroom dancing for 5th graders? On March 22, our Hip2B Healthy ambassadors raised $ with our first farmstand fundraiser - selling grapes, fresh orange juice, apple cider, New York apples, grape tomatoes, Ronnybrook yogurt drinks, strawberries and plants grown by our very own PS 221 urban farmers! Thank you, Jetro Cash and Carry, Ronnybrook, Tree-licious Orchards, Wilklow Orchards, Beth's Farm Kitchen.

 

Check out our photos here

 

Congrats!

Hip2B Healthy Ambassador Award Winners

 

hip2b healthy awards

 

See photos here

 

Gardening and Math? Using a Green Room!

 

smile plant

Our third graders were delighted to learn how to measure and boost their math skills by gardening in the Green Room! They used measuring to solve all types of planting problem, like where to plant seeds in the indoor grow tables.

Thanks to the Whole Kids Foundation, Anna Elllis, teachers and students are growing in tables beautifully crafted by Home Depot and building worm composting bins.

 

See the story at our blogspot

 

See photos here

 

 

RAFFLE! Everybody wins! Win an iPod or earn prizes by selling tickets, including an iPod.

Download flyer here!

 

 

Children’s Garden at Hamilton Metz Park

 

roy garden group

 

Thank you, Kaboom, and Farmer Roy Hildebrant’s family and friends - our Crown Heights Farmers Market co-founders - for planting the first children’s garden at Hamilton Metz Park. We planted trees and bulbs. We look forward to seeing them come up this spring, to bring back our beautiful memories of Farmer Roy, who passed last August.

 

Students cook at the Yale Club

 

Yale club cookingcooking at yale club

 

See our slideshow of Chef Kehrli with his newest sous chefs.

 

 

brooklyn tastes brooklyn tastes

 

Many thanks to all our Tastes of Brooklyn and Eat Real NYC chefs and donors and volunteers and tasters!


Special gratitude to the Aetna Foundation, Bronx Health Reach, Citizens Committee of New York City, Home Depot, Whole Foods Market and all our volunteers and supporters who keep Seeds in the Middle growing! 

ADVISORY BOARD
Seeds in the Middle thanks these distinguished New Yorkers for joining our advisory board! 
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David Appel, MD, director of Montefiore Medical Center's School Health Program, named by New York Magazine as one of New York's "influentials." 

Jimmy Bradley, chef/owner of top-rated Manhattan restaurants, The Red Cat and The Harrison 

Fern Gale Estrow, a Registered Dietitian and founder of The FGE Food and Nutrition Team, whose focus is improving health and quality of life through integration of programs affiliated with food, nutrition education, clinical support, media literacy, and/or policy development.

Yale Club Chef Charles Kehrli

Mary Leou, Ph.D, Director of the Wallerstein Collaborative for Urban Environmental Education at NYU, and Director of the Environmental Conservation Education Program in the Department of Teaching and Learning. (Dr. Leou has over 20 years of experience in urban environmental education. She has received numerous grants to develop school programs, teacher education initiatives, and environmental curricula. She is the former Chair of the Environmental Education Advisory Council and serves on numerous boards in the metropolitan area including Nature Network, Metro Forest Council and a member of the NYS Outdoor Education Association's Environmental Literacy Committee.) 

Sue Torres, chef/owner of top-rated Manhattan restaurant, Suenos
 
Thanks to all our generous donors! Aetna Foundation, Citizens Committee of NYC, Home Depot, Whole Foods Market, Modell's, Institute for Integrative Nutrition, all our volunteer chefs and more…

 		  
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Seeds in the Middle, named by fourth graders, inspires parents, educators, students and their community to access all opportunities beginning with improving their health, enhancing arts education and greening their environment. We are joyful, respectful, educational and engaging. We nurture the whole child.

Our innovative strategy to fight obesity and combat health disparities initiates at schools. We weave proven programs into a comprehensive package to turn around ills driving down opportunity and advancement. We empower and educate all to get healthy and scale disparities. Our pilot Hip2B Healthy schools are in central Brooklyn, a neighborhood with one of New York City's highest obesity, diabetes, and heart disease rates. Our programs are models for replication.

 

We have run community farmers markets and founded Soccer for Harmony tournaments, inspiring social change through soccer. We are proud to boast that our focus 4th grade class test scores in 2012 surpassed the citywide average!


At Seeds in the Middle, we partner with faculty. We teach how to grow, market, access and prepare nutritious food, how to exercise and engage in the arts, all the elements needed to promote life-changing lifelong health. Our partners come from all walks of life: chefs, athletes, educators, artists, builders and more. We cross cultures. We transform gray into green, destitution into inspiration

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fleshfoodforall

Let's be healthy together! Fight COVID-19 with nutrients!
Click below for info and to receive a fresh food box.

Flatbush Thursday @ IS 240 Win $2 coupons and free fruit!

Brownsville Friday outside PS 284 Sign up here.

Carroll Gardens/Cobble Hill - Free lychee mojito!

Flatbush @ Midwood Flats - Free cocktail or slider

Do you believe all children deserve school
gardens and fresh food? We do.

Healthy Eating is a Civil Right - Sign our Petition for Farmstand for Brownsville from Seedsin Themiddle on Vimeo.

We're fighting for equal access to fresh food no matter
where you live! Join us! Donate! See our video!

See what advocacy does! People signed petition and we are growing a garden in Brownsville.

Tastes of Brooklyn logoKeep Bed Stuy Alive

Join us for our new Tastes of Brooklyn on Saturday, Aug. 1. Support the eateries you love and charity! Tickets here.

Thank you. Chefs, Restaurants, Bars, Food
Establishments, all, for supporting our youth!
We are thrilled you are opening up again.

Let's support local! Want to know who's open?
Check out our Tastes of Brooklyn online interactive maps here.

Join our mailing list

Tastes of Brooklyn food and drink crawls coming soon

soccer logoSoccer

Did you see us in the Daily News? 

Nutritionally, a Tale of Two Cities 

Send us your comments at info@seedsinthemiddle.org 

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Our Youth are Against Violence and For Arts, Healthy Food and Opportunity for All

Check out their rap for their Hip2B Healthy Market.

 
 

See the video they made for last year's MLK Day March walk/run

 

Food justice a civil right? Join the MLK Day Million Youth March for Freedom 

 Learn more about Seeds in the Middle from Charity Sub!



Testimonials

thought bubbleSolomon Long, Former Public School Principal, in spring 2009 wrote
I have been a principal in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, for nineteen years. I was born and raised in Crown Heights. I was quite concerned when NY1 showed the statistics on where the highest obesity was in the city. Read more...

bubbleSara Ann Fearon, Fourth Grade Teacher, in July 2011,  teacher Sara-Ann Fearon wrote a moving letter about the deterioration in diet over two decades in Crown Heights and the “staggering” differences in services between their neighborhood and more affluent areas. She movingly describes the impact of Seeds in the Middle. 
“I am reminded of the saying, “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach a  man to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.” This project has created what we hope to be mental and physical adjustments that will continue throughout the lives of these children. It is also my desire to see the continuation of this program in P.S. 221 with its students becoming the ambassadors of healthy eating within their families and their communities."  See entire letter here.

 

bubbleStudents say:
"I love working at Seeds in the Middle because I get to plant and be a part of a group of people who are trying to change the world. I learned that Seeds in the Middle is not just about planting and being healthy, it is to fight bad things that crawl into people such as cancer," said one fourth grader. "I want more people to help us out because it does not hurt for a couple of more hands to come in. "Read more here

 

bubble See what we reported to the Aetna Foundation, our first grantor!
“Seeds in the Middle, named by fourth graders, proves that challenged communities at the
heart of the obesity epidemic can be empowered to change their unhealthy environment, and
boost academic achievement, if provided adequate support and resources. This multi-faceted,
grassroots strategy transformed a school in low-income central Brooklyn, where over 95% of
students receive free or reduced lunch, from being ignorant of links between food and fitness to
good health to becoming active advocates for positive change. Read entire report here!





pet paradeGeorgia Goldendoodle says get a pup a bone!
Georgia thanks Carlo, her fav' Italian guy (may he rest in peace), for those absolutely, scrumptious to die for all-natural beef bones. They’re Georgia and Carlo’s Canine Cuisine. And you can get them from us for your favorite canine guy or gal! “I just go crazy over them,” says Georgia. “Friend me on Facebook: Georgia Goldendoodle.”



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Grantors

Aetna Foundation Bronx Health

 
   
 
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Seeds in the Middle, Brooklyn, New York 11201  Tel: 917-697-3745 Email: info@seedsinthemiddle.org 

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