Farm to Early Care and Education (ECE)

What is Farm to ECE?

Farm to ECE is any activity that improves young children’s health and educadtional success through:

What’s so awesome about it. Farm to ECE is a set of strategies that improves access to healthy, local foods , gardening and nutrition/environmental/agricultural based activities that enhances the quality of educational experiences in all types of early childcare settings. Before the age of 5 is when children develop their life-long dietary habits, so if you want them to love healthy foods, and want them to develop properly, then Farm to ECE is a must for all early care settings!

Farm to Keiki is a Farm to ECE program. We collaborate with many agencies state and nationwide to grow the Farm to ECE movement. Our main partners are the Hawaii Farm to ECE Hui. We meet monthly and work together to create supportive resources and create strategies to grow Farm to ECE in Hawaii. Please contact lydi@hiphi.org if you are interested in participating in the Farm to ECE Hui.

Resources

Here are some resources to get you started!

Here is the link to download “Getting Started with Farm to Early Care and Education”.

Purchasing Locally Grown Food

Cooking locally grown foods with and for children is incredibly rewarding. When we connect children to the local food system, we are growing a new generation of locavores and future farmers! Download this resource here.

Wellness Guidelines

I worked with a wonderful and dedicated group of women in Action Strategy (a Hawai’i ECE working group) to create these wellness guidelines. In my humble opinion, I would like the nutrition guidelines to be more stringent, but majority voted that we didn’t want to scare anyone away! This is a fantastic place to start including wellness in your ECE settings (or home!)… don’t be afraid to go above and beyond these guidelines!

Link to the full document here