As Community Roots begins our second year feeding students across our community, we are building on the strong foundation established during our first year while continuing to reach more children and families throughout Nevada County.
First, we’ll take a moment to celebrate our accomplishments over the summer. School may have been out but our commitment to serving kids and families continued! Our team worked hard to launch our new “rural non-congregate meal program”- a big name for weekly meal bags- and we’re proud to share that we distributed more than 83,000 take-home meals and reached more than 1,000 local families. We also continued daily meal service for children at libraries, summer schools, camps, and other community programs.
These programs helped ensure children continued to have access to nutritious food even when school was not in session. The response from families reinforced both the need for summer meal access and the importance of pursuing service models that work for families across our rural communities.
That momentum carried us into the new school year, where we are eager to build upon the successes of last year. We’re already seeing the enthusiasm- with kids excited to eat breakfast and lunch at school and breaking records for the number of students participating. In fact our team is currently preparing and serving approximately 6,200 breakfasts, lunches, and suppers each day, an increase of 40 percent compared with the same period last school year.
Behind those numbers is an extraordinary team of employees who worked throughout the summer to prepare our kitchens, strengthen our systems, train staff, and ensure school cafeterias were ready to welcome students. We are grateful for their effort and ongoing commitment to kids in our community. We’re also excited for the increase in farm-direct purchasing we’ve been able to achieve, and the staff and students are noticing the difference!
As we look ahead, we are planning for the long-term future of Community Roots. This includes advancing the vision for a Culinary Center that can support a full transition to scratch cooking, local purchasing, and high-quality meal production to take the next step toward our ultimate vision.
Our first year was about creating a unified school food program serving all of Western Nevada County and establishing a strong foundation. Our second year is about building on that foundation, improving student experience, increasing access to nutritious meals, supporting our employees, and developing the infrastructure needed to continue the trajectory of improvement and success.
We invite community members to see our work firsthand through a Lunchtime Live tour. It’s an opportunity to learn more about what Community Roots is doing today and our vision for the future.
Thank you to our employees, partner districts, families, farmers, community organizations, and- of course- students! Our growth and success are only possible because so many people share our belief that every child deserves access to fresh, nourishing food at school and throughout the year.
Sam KoneffKlatt
Executive Director