The Center for Environmental Education Online, Earth Day Network, and The New York Coalition for Healthy School Lunches have joined forces to raise awareness about the need for vibrant and effective environmental education. As a country, it is our responsibility to take care of our children - they are our future leaders. Our children face health issues daily as a result of the food they eat, the water they drink and the air that they breathe. All children have the right to a healthy planet.
This year The Center for Environmental Education Online celebrates its sixteenth year as a national resource center and clearinghouse for environmental education. CEE has become a vital link between the "in-the-trenches" educators and the abundant environmental education resources available. CEE provides important connections for countless in-service teachers so that they are able to bring accurate, interesting, timely, and inspiring teaching materials and resources into their classrooms.
What kids are eating is a hot-button issue in schools and across the country. Childhood obesity is on the rise, and disorders like ADD have been linked to what children eat. Prevention is key. Changing the way kids eat, as well as what they eat, is a large part of our thinking about healthy food in schools. Good nutrition has a vital role in promoting childhood growth, health, and learning, and in reducing the risk for chronic diseases of adulthood. A growing movement has emerged to transform school food services into a vibrant expression of education for sustainability and a national effort to restore the connection of farms to communities, meals to culture and health to environment.
Students with access to programs that bring healthy foods into schools are also learning to grow organic food and prepare delicious meals, which are served as school lunches. Healthy food programs strengthen the students' connection to the earth and their ability to work together as they get their hands in the dirt and harvest the food they will eat for lunch. When kids grow, cook and serve their own food, they want to eat it, their friends want to eat it, and they begin to feel better, have a connection to it and take pride in it. When combined with nutrition education, farm visits, school gardens, and education in the classroom, children can develop healthy eating habits that will last a lifetime.
CEE Online will use proceeds from this year's auction to help develop an online resource for educators, administrators and students that focuses on Healthy Food in Schools. It will provide research on the effects on healthy food on academics and behavior, provide programmatic and curricular resources for the classroom, and link educators to essential materials on the subject.
Earth Day Network, founded by the organizers of the first Earth Day in 1970, promotes environmental citizenship and year round progressive action worldwide. Earth Day Network has become an innovative and respected leader in the environmental movement around the world, working with more than 12,000 organizations in 174 countries. Earth Day Network works year round to broaden the environmental movement through education and the formation of ongoing programs and partnerships that affect change at the local, national and international level.
Earth Day Network will use the funds from The Third Annual Earth Day Auction to continue taking action to protect the health of families and communities. The EDN Water for Life program works to lessen the burden of the world's water crisis on children who experience its related health issues more than anyone. Each day it is estimated that 6,000 people lose their lives to diarrhea and intestinal disease - most of them are children under the age of five.
The New York Coalition for Healthy School Lunches is a grassroots group of concerned parents, students, educators, food service professionals, medical professionals, religious leaders and environmentalists working to bring healthy plant-based nutrition to our schools in response to the health crisis occurring among our children. Because obesity and diet related diseases are at epidemic rates among our children, it's important that schools, the place they go to learn each day, provide healthy foods and set a good example.
Healthy foods and exercise are both important lifestyle choices that go hand in hand to make a healthy person with a strong mind, strong body, and strong spirit. The New York Coalition for Healthy School Lunches focuses on the "healthy foods" aspect of the equation to bring positive change to schools and will use proceeds from the Third Annual Earth Day Auction to further implement those initiatives.
The Third Annual Earth Day Auction proudly benefits the work of The Center for Environmental Education Online , The Earth Day Network and The New York Coalition for Healthy School Lunches . Our goal is quite simple yet so critical: To ensure that our kids live well and make smart choices that will prepare them to lead long, healthy and productive lives!
