The Mosaic Company has given Mortlach School $10,000 as part of a Nutrition Challenge to help the school turn an existing room into a lab to cook healthy foods.
“We’re extremely excited. It’s an opportunity for us that we’ve been trying to put in motion for the last few years, so this helps,” said principal Rayleen Eberl.
The school had a noon-hour canteen that it operated for a few years, but staff and parents wanted to make it more efficient and offer healthier foods, she continued. However, when the school attempted to make this change, the necessary physical structures were not in place.
This is the third time Eberl has applied to the Mosaic Company as part of this food-based initiative. The program originally started in 2006 as the Extreme School Makeover Challenge to encourage grassroots initiatives to help improve student nutrition.
The program gives grants to schools that develop or upgrade indoor and outdoor kitchens and gardens, improve students’ knowledge about cooking, nutrition, agriculture, food, support reconciliation, and develop or further breakfast and snack programs.
Mortlach School started its nutrition program two years ago and received some funding from Prairie South School Division, Eberl explained. Parents ran the program by shopping for the food, preparing healthy snacks and lunches, and placing the packages in the fridge so kids could access them.
“So that has been really successful and just seeing how the kids really enjoy those healthier fruit and veggie snacks and cheese and crackers (has been encouraging),” she said.
The school has a partnership with the Rural Municipality of Wheatland, which provided $1,250 this year to support the food program. This is helpful, said Eberl, since the initiative runs at a deficit and the funding offsets that issue.
After seeing how successful that partnership was, Prairie South provided one teacher at Mortlach School with an innovation grant to help the school construct a greenhouse to grow food.
Eberl included that information in her application to the Mosaic Company since having a food-producing greenhouse and a cooking lab would allow students to learn and meet curriculum outcomes. The youths could then prepare the meals in the morning so they could purchase inexpensive food at lunch. This would also take off some pressure from parents to prepare lunches ahead of time for their kids.
There are 12 youths who regularly access the school’s nutrition program. Sometimes there are others when students forget their lunch on the bus
Several members of the school community council are interested in joining a committee that will oversee the construction of the cooking lab, said Eberl. There is currently one place to cook in the school, but it will be converted into four cooking stations. She expects construction to likely finish within a year.
“We’re really grateful to Mosaic and our school division (for the support),” she added.
