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The S.E.A.L. Project Café’ for Kids....

USDA provides a critical source of funding for food, additionally our involvement with the Central Virginia Food Bank stretches our budget dollars. 

The S.E.A.L. Project Café’ for Kids is dedicated to empowering rural community youth and their families to enhance their self-sufficiency. The components focus on feeding children physically, emotionally and spiritually; strengthening families, teaching respect, encouraging education and promoting positive lifestyles. Our desire is to provide a safe environment that fosters individual growth, emphasizes community involvement and can serve as a gateway to other RISKids.org programs.

The S.E.A.L. Project Café’ for Kids was developed to compliment  and enhance The Social Ecology Aquatic and Leadership (S.E.A.L.) Project, and often our fundraising efforts provide project matching funds for grants that we use to conduct need assessments and to plan activities toward the improvement of at-risk community food delivery such as, but not limited to:

  1. Expanding our mentor center residential style kitchen into a larger and more efficient commercial style kitchen, which can serve as both a training site and initial food service experience center for youth and adults (want to know more?).
  2. Prepare and serve nutritious meals to school-aged youth  through the USDA Sponsored Feeding Programs conducted  within the context of S.E.A.L.’s Mentor Center Curriculum.
  3. Using our youth facility and food service offerings as a vehicle to holistically engage our target area generally through community-wide leveraging of our virtual food pantry service, grant funding initiatives and nutrition supports.

Our Anticipated outcome

Currently, we are the process of starting a commercial vegetable farm garden project which is based on the SPIN (Small Plot Intensive) growing approach. 

One of the objectives is to encourage youth to make the connection between the food they eat and their natural environment.

This project will enable us to partner with a commodities broker who will market our products to a hungry unban market.

It is anticipated that at least 65% of our portion of the funding we raise for The S.E.A.L. Project Café’ for Kids will be used to enhance The Social Ecology Aquatic and Leadership (S.E.A.L.) Project’s ability to exponentially contact, connect, follow-up, grow, and impact school-aged youth.  The remaining 35% of funding goes towards operational and administrative expenses.

We believe that by partnering youth with trained adults (mentors) in order to provide meaningful, hands-on experiences with nature and nutrition through: 1.)  Life changing experiences; 2.) Pro-Social values and decision-making skills; 3.) Positive learning and employment experiences; 4.) Healthy connections to family, friends, and community; and, 5. Long-term spiritual, emotional, cognitive and physical capacity building of youth and adults.