Calgary kids learn skills for life through Kid Food Nation program

One by one, Billie Schultz leads a group of students through a supplies check-list.

“Everyone has a bowl, right? Check?” Schultz asks.

“Check!” the 10 students answer in unison.

It looks like any other home economics class except that none of the children is older than 10 and all are either in Grade 3 or Grade 4.

“These kids are doing Kid Food Nation. It’s a program where we focus on food literacy and cooking skills,” explained Schultz, who is a senior program leader with the Boys and Girls Clubs of Calgary’s (BGCC) Renfrew Club.

“We’re noticing a lot of older kids not having these sort of fundamental cooking food literacy as they get into adulthood and then they’re unable to pass it down to their kids in the future,” they said.

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "We're noticing a lot of older kids not having these sort of fundamental cooking food literacy as they get into adulthood and then they're unable to pass it down to their kids in the future," they said.

The national food program is being offered through the BGCC and is aimed at teaching kids as young as seven what healthy eating habits entail.

“Servings, food groups, balanced meals and then also teaching them some handy tips in the kitchen,” Schultz said.

“Things that we learn here, I make at home too,” said nine-year-old Karishma. “We made scrambled eggs before so I made that at home by myself.”

The program is one of several life skill-type courses being taught to hundreds of kids throughout Calgary each day, five days a week.

“We run quality after school programming with the focus on social/emotional learning and we do that through all the different programs that we offer,” BGCC community coordinator Heather Pawson said.

5:35 Getting children engaged and enthused in the kitchen

The charitable organization runs the majority of its programs during the critical hours outside school hours when kids and youth are most vulnerable to negative influences.

The BGCC rely on community support and funding, like that which they recently received from the Calgary Children’s Foundation, to run their 35 different programs in each of their five Calgary clubs.

The options available cover a broad range of subjects and include everything from arts and sciences to leadership and self-discovery.

None, however, are quite as popular as Kid Food Nation.

“It fills up the fastest each registration,” Pawson said. “So that just proves how much kids really do want to learn to cook and eat what they make.”

Tweet This Click to share quote on Twitter: "It fills up the fastest each registration," Pawson said. "So that just proves how much kids really do want to learn to cook and eat what they make."

Karishma agreed and when asked which was her favourite dish she had made throughout the 12-week program, she replied, “All of them!”