Gerine Williams’ favorite part about working at the Food Literacy Center is changing the minds of elementary school vegetable skeptics.

Williams, the center’s community engagement manager, started this work in 2023 to assist in the reopening of the Oak Park Farmers market. The profession meshed her love of food and working with children.

“It’s always fun when the kids try something new, especially when they’re a bit pessimistic and say, ‘I don’t like vegetables,’ or ‘I don’t like this,’” Williams said. “And then, toward the end of a 30-minute class, they’re into it.”

The center has a strong relationship with Leataata Floyd Elementary through its cooking school and garden. There, students can meet health and science curriculum through a 10-week cooking course and 10-week gardening course.

The Sacramento City Council last week approved funding for the Food Literacy Urban Farm Community Action Engage Empower Implement Initiative that would further this mission.

“This is really a policy direction in our environmental justice element,” said Victor Randall, senior planner at Long Range Planning. “Our guiding implementation of this policy is simply reflecting on the city, our food deserts, and food swamps in certain neighborhoods in this city. And this is a unique opportunity to really build a very strong and robust local food system.”

Through a collaboration with the city, the Food Literacy Center intends to use nearly $500,000 in to support a two-year planning effort with the communities surrounding the Floyd Farm and Leataata Floyd Elementary School.

Amber Stott, founder, CEO and chief food genius at the center, hopes the center will begin “visioning sessions” to give community members a voice in the center’s future programming.

“A lot has changed since we got the keys and moved in,” Stott said. “Like inflation, the cost of groceries, the rate of hunger in our community has tripled in households with kids and so we want to go out into the community, church groups, schools and public housing, and make sure we’re really targeting it to meet the specific needs of the people in our nearby community here.”

Stott started the center in 2011 and it acquired a half vacant lot, owned by the school district, near The Mill at Broadway. The district then began to seek out a nonprofit partner to operate on its land.

“My input was, the main target audience for this are the kids of Leataata Floyd, and many of them live in public housing across the street,” Stott said. “The thing they are going to do, no matter where they live, is eat. And our program is all about inspiring kids to eat vegetables.”

On a typical day, in the space, staff don green aprons with the center’s title and emblem: a broccoli floret. Blooms of leafy vegetables sit in mixing bowls. Ovens hum as cranberries and nuts dehydrate in convected heat. Near them, tri-colored rotini goes limp on stoves topped with pots of boiling water. The scent of lime, herbs, and surfaces dusted with flour fill the space.

Frequent hits in the kitchen for the children are the soba noodle salad and kohlrabi, Williams and kitchen coordinator Nadia Lobo said.

Lobo has worked at the center for less than a year, being placed in the farm to school programs through a fellowship. She finds meaning in her job in interactions with children to address food equity and sustainability.

“I think the whole point of this organization is to actually get children and their families to not only try new foods, but actually give them recipes that are sustainable for them and their lives,” Lobo said. “The organization was based on trying to stop childhood obesity and that’s what this does, it helps children develop habits to eat new foods, eat healthier as children, and eat healthier as adults.”

Kitchen coordinator Sebastian Recostodio mirrored Lobo’s sentiments. Recostodio interned at the center last summer, and said he enjoys providing physical access to nutritious foods in areas where much of Sacramento’s food deserts exist and the financial barriers persist.

In 2022, UC Davis reported that 40% of children in Sacramento suffered from childhood obesity or were overweight. According to the California Department of Education, 94% of students who attend the school are socioeconomically disadvantaged and majority do not meet state math and reading proficiency levels.

Cassandra Nguyen, assistant professor of cooperative extension at UC Davis in the nutrition department, believes the center’s upcoming programming has the potential to impact students’ performance in school and ability to ward off long-term chronic conditions pertaining to diet.

“Poor nutrition is related to worse academic performance and cognitive development so having an overall diverse and balanced healthy diet is related to greater performance and better cognitive development,” Nguyen said.

Additionally, the center could help incite conversation around the neighborhood’s food access characteristics.

In the back of the center is a farm and apiary, run by farm site development coordinator Erin Morris. There students at the elementary school learn to bring field-to-fork.

The farm is undergoing weed abatement, using tarp occultation to better the soil for future plans of row crops and fruit trees.

“I’m really excited about the potential to really engage with the community,” Morris said. “Asking what they would like this space to be and what they can get out of the farm because it’s really nice to be in a space that’s open and able to engage with others.”