Throughout the Montérégie area (a large agricultural region south of Montreal, in the Province of Quebec), daycares are committed to local, sustainable food. Whether through regular sourcing of local products, direct connections with organic farming families or the development of learning gardens and educational activities, these daycares are teaming with stories and ideas to help children eat healthy, local, organic foods.
Through a project called Croqu’Plaisir, Équiterre offered over 50 local daycares a custom-made mentoring service to help them rethink their procurement of local organic foods and gave them teaching tools to make young and old alike more aware of the joys of healthy eating. During the entire growing season, children and educators get to eat fresh local produce grown in Montérégie by sourcing food from local farmers, creating learning gardens or hosting educational activities.
During the first phase of the project (2012-2014), more than 25 business relationships were developed or strengthened with organic farmers from Équiterre’s farming families network, local producers and producer groups. A survey carried out amoung participating early childhood centres shows that 100% of the food service staff and daycare managers sought more local foods in their suppliers’ food lists and over 88% ordered more local foods.
Learn more about these daycares, their individual stories and their accomplishments.
