Our Food Program

At our demonstration program site in the Blue Ridge Mountains and through MobilePage outreach, PAGE is helping connect Appalachian grown foods with learning opportunities for girls.

Eating locally grown, healthy foods is an important part of our annual summer program. Each summer, we provide a hot breakfast and lunch, cooked by our own kitchen team, for all students, interns, and staff. Our Farm to Table Coordinator works with our local farm and bakery partners to source seasonal vegetables; pasture-raised meat, chickens, and eggs; and fresh bakery goods. As the Madison Middle Heritage Garden continues to grow, we are able to harvest greens, herbs, berries, and vegetables more often right from our own backyard! Our goal is to introduce as much Appalachian-grown food as possible into summer program meals and year-round learning opportunities.

PAGE girls cooking in the kitchen

Through our Farm to Table Food initiative, we hope to address food insecurity through high-quality meals and education about local foods.

We achieve this in part through connecting our Farm to Table Food initiative to new learning opportunities. One example is an Appalachian Foodways Oral History project, where girls interviewed local women about making and growing food and learned new technology skills to transform their interviews and photographs into multi-media oral histories.

Another example is our Heritage Garden PageLab, a new STEM opportunity for girls. Girls are learning firsthand about plant science, soils, and heritage growing traditions in this pop-up garden classroom. It features Appalachian seeds and plants, such as heirloom strawberries donated by the Tribal Greenhouse of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians(ECBI).

With projects such as these, we hope to honor local food traditions and help a new generation of adolescent girls envision the food traditions they will create – for themselves and their future families.