By Anupama Joshi, Executive Director of the National Farm to School Network

October is National Farm to School Month, a time to celebrate the connections that are happening all over the country between children and local food! This year, we are also using the approach of Farm to School Month as a time to celebrate our connection with YOU, our National Farm to School Network (NFSN) members, so we can ensure that we are serving you as well as we possibly can.

We hope that you will take a few moments to complete the following survey to provide us with your perspective about NFSN’s existing services and your ideas about future work.

Here is a link to the survey:
https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/NFSNMemberSurvey2014


NFSN serves as an information, advocacy and networking hub for the farm to school/preschoolcommunity. So far, 2014 has been a great year for our work:

  • Updated numbers from the first-ever national farm to school census demonstrating the breadth of activities in more than 40,000 schools, positively impacting more than 23 million children.
  • Launch of a brand new website, with an increased capability to engage with members and a huge searchable resource database.
  • More than 38 states and DC have successfully worked on Farm to school/preschool policies, as we prepare for Child Nutrition Reauthorization at the federal level in 2015.
  • Release of a pioneering new resource “Evaluation for Transformation: A Cross-Sectoral Framework for Farm to School Evaluation.”
  • NFSN hosted the 7th National Farm to Cafeteria Conference in Austin, TX, with a record 1,100 participants representing schools, preschools, hospitals, colleges, farms, processors and distributors.
  • And we began to engage with a cohort of Native American communities across the country to ensure that farm to school/preschool activities become a reality in tribal nations.

Through this survey, we hope to examine the value that results from our network: our members learning and working together, accessing resources and best practices, and engaging in policy advocacy efforts. We will be using this information to inform our plans for 2015. The survey is anonymous, so please be forthright with your answers and feedback.

We use the abbreviation F2S/F2P to represent both farm to school and farm to preschool activities.

Please contact NFSN Evaluation Consultant Lydia Oberholtzer (lydiaoberholtzer@gmail.com) with any questions, technical issues or problems accessing the survey.

Thank you so much for your input. I look forward to learning about your perspectives on NFSN’s efforts in 2014, and ideas for the future.