Emanuel County Family Connection provides supplemental educational opportunities

Emanuel County Family Connection provides supplemental education opportunities to students in K-5th grades focusing on improving literacy and nutrition. One of the strongest programs that Family Connection offers is the Charlie Cart Project, which is a hands-on cooking and nutrition education program. According to the findings by the Charlie Cart Project, one in six kids in the U.S. will go hungry. One in three will develop Type 2 diabetes in their lifetime. Food security and healthy eating require two things: access to fresh, healthy food; and basic skills to prepare that food. It’s simple. Food education is essential for lifelong health.

Kids need to understand how to make good choices in order to fuel their bodies so they can think clearly and feel their best. In addition, the Charlie Cart recipes are relevant in that they don’t call for fancy, high-priced ingredients that aren’t attainable in most households. Kids will learn that nutrition on a budget is possible and that they can play an active role in nourishing their bodies/minds at home and later in life.

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Tammy Allen, Family Connection Coordinator, and other Family Connection Volunteers come into the classrooms to teach these classes when the teachers find it matches their lesson plans. It can be a math, science, or social studies lesson. The most frequently scheduled classes have been in the STEAM classes at SES, SPS and TCE.

The Charlie Cart is a mobile kitchen equipped with all the tools that a classroom of 30 students would need to prepare most dishes. Having this valuable resource in the elementary schools is such a great teaching tool.

What about the additional needed resources like food items, ingredients, and misc supplies? Thanks to the support of the Mill Creek Foundation, Family Connection received a grant to be able to offer Charlie Cart Classes again in the 2024-2025 school year!