Food for Thought

"Food for Thought" is a health and education program aimed at children aged between six and twelve who live in the vulnerable community Monte Chingolo, Argentina. We have created a space that promotes and protects children's rights through providing nutritious food and creative educational activity. We focus on four key pillars:

• Health and Nutrition - Nutritious food and a balanced diet are fundamental to good health and are essential to learning, social behaviour and cognitive development. We provide healthy meals combined with education around food and healthy hygiene habits. • Education – Education drives sustainable social change within communities. More often than not, we use the arts as the preferred medium. Interaction and enjoyment are the keys to unlocking children’s learning. We provide drama, art, music, yoga, healthy cooking, physical education, sustainable gardening, and recreation classes.

• Social inclusion - We work with children from many difficult backgrounds and circumstances. The children learn to respect themselves and support each other within this community context. We work closely with the families as to provide a holistic approach to the child’s integral development.

• Environment and Sustainability – Teaching children about ecology, gardening, sustainability, and recycling, provides them with the tools to live more sustainable and healthy lives. We teach children to nurture and respect their local environment, which in return has a positive impact on their personal health. Our goal is to expand our repertoire of education workshops. We plan to offer activities in cooking (parents and children), sexual education (for the older children), dance, circus, sports, martial arts, and carpentry (specifically - instrument making). As we are a not-for-profit, we rely on the support of donors and revenue streams that we have created. We hold yearly fundraising events in Australia, New Zealand, and Argentina. We also have a not-for-profit café in Melbourne, Australia, The Final Step cafe, which donates 100% of it’s profits towards our project. Even though we have many revenue streams, it is imperative that we search for more funding.

We are extremely interested in the growth of the project, and also in extending it’s reach to:

A. improve our effectiveness as an organisation.

B. increase the number of children and families that we can support. We not only are looking for funding to pay for specialist teachers, but also to pay for teaching resources and most importantly, food for the children.