What is the SEEAG Youth Wellness Initiative?
SEEAG’s Youth Wellness Initiative is designed to educate and empower students and their families to embrace healthy lifestyles by understanding the robust connection between agriculture and our health and wellness.
Program Mission: To educate, inspire, and empower children and their families about food literacy, and the food supply system with an emphasis on addressing food access, and highlighting the nutritional value of local crops and agricultural products through experiential and holistic nutrition education, online resources, and community wellness fairs.
With a focus on nutrition, this initiative is threefold:
informs our Farm-to-Food Lab program
hosts monthly wellness fairs at schools
offers online resources for ongoing support
In the Food Lab segment of our Farm-to-Food Lab third-grade program, students explore nutrition, taste local crops, and learn about mindful eating and food waste. At Farm Fresh Wellness Fairs, students and their families receive local produce, recipes, food samples, seeds, nutrition resources, and food access information.
Wellness is a multifaceted, broad concept. Whether it be nutrition, physical activity, or mental health, our minds and bodies are interconnected. At SEEAG, we know and understand that knowledge is power. SEEAG classes primarily target school-age children, teaching them about the food system, agriculture, the farm sources of food, and nutrition. Our desired community nutrition outcomes are purchasing more local produce, supporting farmers, eating a more plant-forward diet, sustainability, and reducing food waste.
With that being said, parents are typically the primary decision makers in family households. Similarly, teachers model healthy habits for their students. We want to increasingly target, invite, encourage, and inspire parents and teachers as they proactively seek to positively influence their childrens' wellness. We also believe in educating, empowering, and motivating parents and teachers to model and reinforce healthy lifestyle choices of both the mind and body using community resources, tools, best practices, and the latest scientific evidence-based recommendations for their children. In the “Kids Corner”, children will find wellness activities. The whole family and teaching community is welcome to explore!
Our goal is to use this website to expand upon wellness with:
readily accessible recipes
nutrition information
physical activity tips
mental health suggestions
community resources
Students for Eco-Education and Agriculture (SEEAG) is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization whose mission is to educate students and the greater community about the farm origins of food and agriculture’s contribution to our nutritional well-being through hands-on classroom and outdoor experiential S.T.E.M. based learning.
The Youth Wellness Initiative is one of our youth education programs that help accomplish this goal. Along with the goals of the initiative mentioned above, SEEAG strives to give students experiences that inspire them to appreciate the hands and lands that feed us, explore career paths in agriculture, and champion sustainable practices. These programs serve K-12 students throughout Santa Barbara and Ventura Counties, and have remained 100% cost-free since our inception in 2008. If you'd like to learn more about our youth programs, annual Farm Day events for the community, and ways you can support, please visit our website at www.seeag.org.
Learn more about SEEAG’s Youth Wellness Initiative!