TED Community » Ruth Williams

More About Me

I'm passionate about

Connecting families with tools to provide real food on their tables.

An idea worth spreading

Victory Gardening. Seed saving.

Talk to me about

Nutrition, gardening, herbals, connecting low income individuals with resources for success.

People don't know that I'm good at

Being a birth doula.

Comments

• TEDCred score: +0.20 TEDCred reflects your contribution to the TED community.

• A reply on Conversation: How will you help to fulfill Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish?

  Mar 20 2011: http://ccetompkins.org/garden/community-school-gardens/gardens-4-humanity
  
  Nice! We are all out there marching one step forward at a time! The heroes are the volunteers.
• +1

  A reply on Conversation: How will you help to fulfill Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish?

  Mar 20 2011: I started a garden at work for two reasons. 1) To expose employees fresh quick healthy options with demonstrations how to cook produce. 2) For the emergency food pantry I oversee to provide organic produce.
  
  From there I realized quickly the need for these consumer of the emergency food pantry to learn how to grow their own veggies. I surveyed pantry consumer for 1 month and well over 90% desired to learn to grow. I was surprised by the statistics that of the 100 households more than 33% are families of 5 or more. The households who have children are my primary focus. With the local extension office we are connecting families with garden mentors through Master Gardeners and Garden 4 Humanity. Each household will receive a pack of live plants and seeds based on their household size. We will also provide a Victory Garden Handbook that contains recipes and will offer them opportunities to learn how to preserve their harvest by canning, freezing, etc. An important piece to this is showing them how to save seeds from the heirloom varieties.
  
  Thank you about the schools. I work with three different school districts. I am planning to send them this link.

• A reply on Conversation: How will you help to fulfill Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish?

  Mar 19 2011: I applaud you and parents like you. But if you dig deeper and look at the larger systemic issue with schools and poverty the children this affects the most are the low income families who don't have the resources to do what you do. So we all agree children need to eat healthier. Now look at the state education system and their current focus on how they procure food. Their system is broken. They truck in foods as commodities which we all know are highly processed, high fat, sodium and sugar. They are very nutrient deficient. They do try their best with what they have however programs like Head Start have been attempting to work with these school districts to improve the quality and advocating exactly what Jamie Oliver is saying. Speaking for myself I have been doing that for 15 years. I am but one voice when many are needed.
  
  If schools focused on local fresh options and connected with farm to plate our nation's addiction to junk foods would be better equalized. And it all starts with our seeds of education.
• +1

  A comment on Conversation: How will you help to fulfill Jamie Oliver's TED Prize wish?

  Mar 18 2011: I have initiated a Victory Garden 100 project that will connect 100 households in my local communities with gardens of their own to grow based on their household size. This will be supported with local resources and the passion of making real food connections to at risk populations. This will be made possible with connections I have made with generous individuals growing seeds from donated resources and bringing on board a local university to help grow the needed plants. Our work goal is to then have a nutrition plan that will support households in education about foods they are growing and foods they have not tried into quick easy recipes. I want to write a cook book. I am also reviewing all menu items and purchasing to remove all high fructose corn syrup in any menu planning. I firmly believe in this mission, and support Jamie Oliver's approach and passion in helping to save lives.
  
  I have recently signed up for and in the middle of taking a Garden 4 Humanity course that addresses the needs in the communities in which I work to help support the mission from a ground up manner.
  
  I also work with local school districts food service and plan to share this video with them for reference and inspiration.