Tag: Healthy Eating grant

Children in elementary school benefit from healthy nutrition education. This class enjoyed fruit for a treat.

Border Partners is pleased to announce that we’ve received approval for a second year of funding from the Paso del Norte Health Foundation under their Healthy Eating priority. This Healthy Eating grant will enable us to continue and extend the work we’ve accomplished to further nutrition education in Palomas.

Healthy Eating Grant

This child received her own serving of healthy foods.

During this past year, while using the healthy eating grant, our staff has delivered a comprehensive program of both nutrition and gardening classes to students of all ages in the schools in Palomas. The cooks for the schools’ food service programs also received training about how to include more healthy foods in the lunches they serve. And the teachers attended trainings to learn why it’s so very important to educate children about healthy eating habits.

Each of the five schools now has a year-round greenhouse filled with seasonal, healthy vegetables. The students of the schools plant the vegetables, and the school cooks can use them in lunches. In addition to our biannual community health fair, this grant enabled us to conduct a health fair at each school, targeting each program for their own special needs. We also participated in two health fairs for all the preschools in the area.

Looking to 2025

Now, thanks to continued support from the Paso del Norte Health Foundation – our partner for nearly a decade – we can expand our activities and offer Palomas students more opportunities to learn and grow. We are so grateful for the longstanding support from the Paso del Norte Health Foundation for the Healthy Eating grant.

Obesity, diabetes and hypertension are serious health concerns in Mexico. There is much work to do to prevent disease through healthy eating. Equipped with the Healthy Eating grant, we’re looking forward to working together to prepare students for a healthy future.

Preschool child enjoys healthy fresh food during a nutrition lesson led by Border Partners in his classroom. (File photo)

Border Partners was one of 15 groups in our region receiving a grant under the Paso del Norte Health Foundation’s new program called “Healthy Eating.” We were excited to recently hear this news. This one-year grant will enable our staff to work closely with the schools in Palomas to create an improved, healthy school environment. The grant will focus on nutrition and gardening education, on-site greenhouses, and nutritious meals for students.

Border Partners has done some nutrition education over the past years for many different groups. But we’ve never worked with the focus that this new grant will allow. Each class at every grade level (770 students, K-12) will participate in eight class sessions. Each class session will present a nutrition topic suited for their age and taught by Border Partners’ staff over this next school year.

Each school will have its own greenhouse to grow fresh, healthy vegetables for their students’ lunches. There will be sessions with students in the greenhouses so they learn how to grow vegetables. Each classroom will have a container garden so they can watch plants grow every day. Cooks at the schools will also benefit from sessions with our staff on ways to incorporate the vegetables from the greenhouses into their menus.

We’re training for this work now.  Currently, Border Partners’ staff are learning from professional nutritionists and are preparing lesson plans and materials to use with the students in the classes.

We’re, of course, very grateful to the Paso del Norte Foundation for this new opportunity to improve health in Palomas. Their grants to our programming over the last eight consecutive years have helped us grow our programs and build capacity. We’re confident that this new effort will improve overall health in Palomas, as we help children form habits that will benefit them for a lifetime.