Published: August 2025
By: Sarah Keyes, F2CC’s Food Literacy Lead
Farm to Cafeteria Canada is kick-starting our School Food and Food Education Training Hub thanks to a generous donation from the RBC Foundation. This new seed funding will enable the Hub team to develop a series of professional development (PD) courses aimed at building educators’ capacity to teach about food and food systems in classrooms and communities across Canada.
As a teaching tool, food provides a powerful way for students to build important life skills while learning about diverse cultures, health, justice, the environment and climate change, and so much more. How do educators get started in using food to teach the curriculum, though? Food systems are complex, and we’ve heard from many educators that food-related PD learning opportunities are limited. Educators who are already teaching through food have also shared they would benefit from more opportunities to connect with their peers.
This is why we’re launching Canada’s first Training Hub dedicated to food literacy education. We’ll work with knowledge holders, experts, F2CC’s partners, and other collaborators to build a centralized platform to offer PD courses, house supporting resources, and facilitate peer networking and knowledge-sharing spaces to help fill the gaps.
With the right support, there is potential to reach thousands of students each year.
“Strengthening our communities is at the heart of everything we do. Today, the world is navigating challenging times and our role in giving back has never been more important,” said Andrea Barrack, SVP, Sustainability & Impact, RBC. “Food security is a growing need and a critical foundation to a thriving community, and we need broader solutions that help meet the needs of today and tomorrow through food storage, supply and distribution solutions, community support and farming innovation.”
We’re hoping that educators who engage with the Hub will come away from their experience feeling inspired, confident, and more equipped to help students build food literacy. On top of diving into a wide range of food system issues, our courses will share ideas of how to embed food across the curriculum, and explore how to make learning both fun and impactful (rather than it feeling like additional work). Educators will learn the logistics of facilitating hands-on food lessons while deepening their understanding of how food makes learning real and meaningful by connecting students with each other, the land, and their communities.
The Hub’s PD courses will centre equity and culturally responsive pedagogy, helping educators facilitate classroom conversations around food using solutions- and strengths-based approaches to ensure students feel safe, heard, and included. We will support educators to teach about different food cultures in appropriate and authentic ways, creating sensitive and inclusive learning environments, and connecting learning to students’ personal experiences and cultures. Hub courses will also share ideas on how to teach about the injustices and inequities in food systems in ways that inspire action among students, including how to speak up for change towards more equitable and just food and social systems.
To lead the PD course development and support the Hub’s expansion, we’re thrilled to welcome Lindsay Sargent as our new Food Literacy Coordinator. Lindsay is a former K-7 elementary and Forest School educator who is now working with Lakehead University’s Farm Lab project where she supports pre-service teachers to use garden and place-based learning in their classrooms. Lindsay also teaches environmental education at Lakehead and has just completed a Masters of Education focusing on reconciliation rooted in Land and relationship.
F2CC is thrilled to be launching the Hub to help connect educators and grow food literacy education in Canada. We know that educator training is just one piece of the puzzle, however, so we’ll be continuing to work on advocacy, funding, research, and storytelling to help build broad public and policy support for more food education in Canada.
With the inclusion of food literacy learning as an objective in Canada’s National School Food Policy, the opportunity to grow this movement is now. In doing so, we’ll be helping equip children and youth with the skills, confidence, and knowledge to nourish themselves and their families for life. This will help make a generational improvement in the health and wellbeing of Canadians, a critical component of a strong future and country.
The first set of Hub courses are being developed over the next few months and we plan to launch and offer them as pilots in 2026. In the meantime, if you’d like to stay updated and hear about opportunities to be involved, please sign up here:
For more information about food literacy, check out the Coalition for Healthy School Food’s Food Literacy infographic and the recent Food Literacy Education Guide.
