We’ve learned today that the Green Heart Project will be the 2015 Charleston Wine + Food Festival‘s community partner. Green Heart Project is a program that pairs volunteers with students to build and maintain an urban garden while focusing on the virtues of eating healthy foods, working hard, and working together.
Chauncey Jordan, Drew Harrison, and restaurateur Karalee Nielsen founded Green Heart in 2009 with the goal of bringing healthy food options to the community. To do so, they started with a garden at Mitchell Elementary. The project has since grown with farm-to-school activities, summer programs, and green heart buddies, all helping kids learn where their food comes from, as well as teaching children about native species of plants, health, and community. And now Green Heart will get a little bit more attention thanks to Charleston Wine + Food.
“As our community partner, we work more closely with the Green Heart Project in meaningful ways to result in greater exposure and ultimately, greater donations,” says Cathryn Zommer, festival director of communications.
“We cannot be more thrilled to be the Charleston Wine + Food community partner for 2015. For 10 years now, the festival has celebrated the food and culinary culture that make Charleston amazing,” says Drew Harrison, executive director of the Green Heart Project. “The Green Heart Project looks to honor that same culinary culture as we teach our youth and community about the role food plays in our lives. Through our partnership, we look forward to bringing our youth, the future of our culinary culture, into the conversation and celebration at the Charleston Wine + Food Festival this year,”
W+F staffers had a chance to work with the kids the other week, helping harvest over 100 pounds of sweet potatoes. On the fest’s blog, Zommer writes that the sweet potatoes “are curing and will be incorporated into a new sweet potato recipe served to students by their school cafeteria in celebration of World Food Day (October 24).”
For more information on the Green Heart Project, visit greenheartsc.org.
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