2001-2004
Rooted deeply in the San Mateo County (SMC) Coastside community, The HEAL Project (THP) sprang out of concerns of local parents and community members that children were becoming too detached from the food that nourishes them. Between 2001 and 2005, this group sought funding to construct an educational garden at Hatch Elementary School in Half Moon Bay, California.
2005
In October of 2005, our signature program, later named the Intensive Garden Program (IGP), was established. The program aimed to address childhood obesity in Coastside schools through a garden, nutrition and (for a brief time) sports curriculum.
2006
After a yearlong pilot program for six of Hatch Elementary School’s 2nd and 3rd grade classes, the IGP was expanded in 2006 to incorporate all ten of the school’s 2nd and 3rd grade classes. The Garden Club was created as a recess option for 4th and 5th graders, giving students the opportunity to continue their connection with the garden past our formal curriculum.
2007-2008
From 2007-2008, we expanded our IGP program to Farallone View Elementary School and constructed a garden on their campus. Our IGP curriculum was set up for 26 weeks of environmental education in coordination with California state standards.
Also during this time, students in our program at Hatch Elementary became the first student certified growers in the state of California to sell student-raised produce in farmers’ markets. Student interest in the markets spurred us to partner with the Coastside Farmers’ Market on the introduction of our Junior Marketeers Program. Graduates of the IGP practice math, cooperation, responsibility and customer service skills as “Marketeers” selling student-grown produce at the farmers’ market in Half Moon Bay.
2008-2009
In 2008-2009, THP won the J. Russell Kent Award from the SMC School Boards Association for our IGP at Hatch. We officially became a nonprofit, taking up the name HEAL as an acronym for Health, Environment, Agriculture Learning. Upon acquiring 501c3 status, we framed our original mission statement to share our intentions with the community:
The HEAL Project teaches students to make healthy choices for themselves and their world.
2010
In 2010, THP’s second signature program was initiated. As part of the vision of the San Mateo County Food Systems Alliance and with support from the San Mateo County Health System, the San Mateo County School Farm (SMCSF) was created.
Thanks to the generosity of Dave Lea of Cabrillo Farms, we secured an in-kind lease for two-acres of farmland north of Half Moon Bay. With this new space, we began providing farm field trips for schools within San Mateo County.
2013
Over the next few years, we tested out several arrangements and worked through the challenges of launching a new program. By 2013, we had landed on a sliding fee scale to make our low-cost field trips free to the highest-need schools in San Mateo County.
2015
In 2015 with our IGP and SMCSF in full swing, we hired the current Executive Director, who went to work on an internal strengthening of our organization and began to build a financial reserve to maximize the organization’s resilience. We also modified our curriculum and lesson plans to align with state educational standards so we could provide greater support to the science programs of the schools we serve.
2016-2017
2016-2017 was a big renovation year for us. We rebuilt the Hatch School garden and improved infrastructure at the Farallone View School garden and at the San Mateo County School Farm. We also began a two-year Strategic Planning project, created a new logo, rolled out a new website and adopted an updated mission statement:
The HEAL Project teaches kids where their food comes from and why it matters.
In this same year, THP was honored to win two awards: the first “Innovation Award” at the Mel Mello Farm Day Luncheon, and recognition for One Planet Challenge as part of the SMC Office of Education’s (SMCOE) Environmental Literacy Initiative for Local Sustainable Food System Instruction in San Mateo County.
2018-2019
In 2018-2019, our new relationship with the SMCOE helped us adapt our lesson plans for each grade level visiting the farm to support California’s Common Core and Next Generation Science Standards. Moreover, we developed our Theory of Change and created an Evaluation Plan to help us measure our impact. These tools have helped us to clearly communicate how our programs benefit the students that we serve.
We saw over 3,000 students across our programs, our record number for students seen in a year. Our plan was to keep increasing the number of students served at the SMC Farm and improve our evaluation tools for all of our in-person lessons moving forward.
2019-2020
The first half of 2019 looked bright until the coronavirus pandemic and associated restrictions put a halt to all of our in-person programming. Despite financial losses, we were able to keep all of our staff working from home to find creative ways to continue educating kids in these changing times. In place of in-person programs, we produced video lessons that we offered to teachers across the county for no cost.
Motivated by the nationwide focus on systemic racism, we started an Equity and Justice work-group to hold ourselves accountable to long-term work centering those values. We are in the ongoing process of identifying and setting goals for areas of potential improvement.
We are proud to have been honored with three awards in the 2020-2021 fiscal year. The Sustainable San Mateo County’s (SMC) 2021 Sustainability Award was granted to THP for our work in advancing sustainability throughout our county. The 2020 Kent Award from the SMC School Boards Association was given for THP’s outstanding Farm programs offered to students of SMC. The Half Moon Bay Coastside Chamber of Commerce’s 2020 Pivot Pioneer Award was determined by a community vote for THP’s leadership bringing local camp providers together to coordinate a menu of available fall 2020 camps to get local students outdoors and in safe environments during remote schooling.
We created and shared 26 mini-video lessons to Hatch IGP students during remote schooling to parallel lessons students would have had with in-person IGP.
THP saw few students at the farm on field trips but offered camps during asynchronous learning days while students transitioned back to attending school in person part time.
Our hope is that students who participate in our programs, whether in-person or virtual, will grow up to be more invested in their own health as well as the health of the environment.
2020 - 2021
2021 - 2022
During 2021 for the first time in our history, we expanded the Intensive Garden Program to all four elementary schools within the Cabrillo Unified School District (CUSD), funded by CUSD!
We began collaborating with CUSD to offer sustainability support for the district via rain catchment, leading grant writing for the electric bus grants and leading the sustainability dashboard with San Mateo County Office of Education.
We broadened our pandemic virtual offerings to see students via live streamed lessons and classroom visits, while waiting for schools to get back to visiting the Farm.
In 2021-2022 the Board of Directors and staff shifted our Equity and Justice work by partnering with Justice Outside on a sixteen-month-long project designed to educate us and create an Organizational Assessment.
The students seen in our farm programs this year were still less than half of our pre-pandemic numbers due to schools having limited ability to transport students while following COVID-19 protocols. The biggest drop in student-visitors was seen in the highest need schools.
2022 - 2023
We received Justice Outside’s report and recommendations to improve our internal and external systems and programs. We began updating lessons, practices, and pay structure to align with the report’s findings. The Equity and Justice Work Group resumed to create a work plan to continue implementing best practices and make farm visits accessible to the highest need schools once again.
Our focus in 2022-2023 is to create a San Mateo County School Garden Handbook complete with our weekly lessons for grades 2-3, a regional planting guide adapted to the school year, and garden funding resources to help schools start their own garden program. We will pilot this program in a small number of schools before offering it more broadly next year.
Since infection rates had dropped, the federal government determined that COVID-19 was no longer a public health emergency.
This year, attendance returned to pre-pandemic numbers across all programs, in public school garden programs, field trips and camps to the San Mateo County School Farm.