Our Mission

Our vision is to reconnect families to the earth through food, education and community.

We are a diverse group of community members collaborating with Ojai's public schools to nurture an awareness of food and its relationship to health, society and the environment.  Our volunteers and staff coordinate experiential learning opportunities in schools and participate in outreach, advocacy and coalition-building in the greater community. 

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Why We Do What We Do

Childhood Obesity

Childhood obesity has reached epidemic proportions across the United States. In Ventura County the rate of childhood obesity is 13.2%, higher than the national average and points to an urgent need to address this problem on a local level. Childhood obesity is one of the main reasons behind the surge of Type 2 diabetes (normally an adult disease) cases found in children under 12. If we don’t address this serious issue now, there will be even greater local and national level health and economic consequences in the future as a result of increased rates of stroke, heart disease, diabetes and other health issues associated with obesity. Good nutritional awareness and habits established during childhood can be one of the most effective ways to combat this and other health-related issues associated with obesity in later years. 

Today’s television-watching children will receive about 10,000 messages promoting various kinds of commercialized and highly processed food products by the time they start kindergarten. “Cooking from scratch” with fresh ingredients has become a rarity among the growing number of families with working parents. As a consequence, an increased reliance on packaged, processed and prepared foods has lead to an alarming increase in diet-related health issues for children and adults.  

A central theme of Food For Thought’s program is to teach children good eating habits early in life and to maintain those habits into adulthood. We do this through taste tests, cooking demonstrations, and nutrition education curriculum integrating California State educational standards, and by working with the District to introduce fresh, seasonal, locally grown produce in the weekly salad bars as part of the National School Lunch Program for OUSD schools.  

Reconnecting Kids to the Land

Americans have come to demand and expect fruits and vegetables to be available out of season, which has increased our dependence on imported produce that sometimes travels thousands of miles to reach our tables. Our food production and delivery system has become increasingly centralized and globalized, and as a result, it has become harder and harder to obtain fruits and vegetables from local farms. This is a travesty since local produce, grown in season and harvested at peak ripeness, is often fresher, more nutritious, and tastier than imported produce that is picked before it is ripe.  

Our connection to the food we eat and the farmers that grow our food has been broken. Most of our children (and even their parents!) are unaware of the link between the food they eat and where it came from, and the work of the farmer and farm workers who grew it for them. 

An important part of the Food For Thought program is to help our children and our community reconnect to the land that sustains them. We do this through farm field trips, community outreach events, and garden-based learning curriculum in the schools. By doing this, we seek to raise awareness and appreciation in the community for the important historical and economic role of agriculture in our region, and the importance of supporting our local farmers. We believe this will help us grow a locally based food system that is healthier for our community, for our farmers and farm workers, and for the environment.  

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