WE grew those!!

Gabriola Elementary School, Gabriola Island, BC
Grant term, 2025-2026

Gabriola Elementary School (GES) is a public elementary school located on Gabriola Island, British Columbia. It serves as the primary educational institution for children on the island, providing instruction from kindergarten through grade seven within the Nanaimo-Ladysmith Public Schools (School District 68). If you’re visiting from Vancouver Island, Gabriola is accessible by a 25 minute, $39.15 (one person + car) BC ferry ride from downtown Nanaimo.

GES partnered with People for a Healthy Community (PHC), Gabriola’s community resource centre whose vision is to strengthen and expand our school food programming in ways that increase student access to healthy, culturally appropriate meals while deepening connections between youth, local food systems, and the broader community. PHC currently serves the community with a passion for food security and is conveniently located across the street from GES, on a Gabriolan owned property called “the Commons.”

For years now, GES students make their way over to PHC’s education gardens at the Commons’ North Community Garden every Friday for garden class. With Farm to Cafeteria Canada’s Dig In! Seed Grant, we’ve been able to increase the amount of local and/or nutrient dense snacks circulating in the school. It started with adding food literacy programs in the winter in lieu of outdoor garden class (in rainy, West Coast weather), using Hands On Food lesson plans to learn knife skills together, learn to preserve our own food, and create & eat meals together as a group. The students made freezer jam, fruit leathers & fruit chips that stocked their breakfast and snack programs for the next few weeks. We were also able to provide snacks for every student, every class, every Friday, at the end of Garden Class. Snacks varied from fruit leathers, to kale chips that the students picked themselves and requested different seasonings for the next week, to fresh “salads” they would make in class.

The excitement has followed us straight into the garden with a warm spring. You’ll find Gabriola Elementary students in the garden cooking up rhubarb syrups, roasted vegetables (they’ll remind you – “WE grew those!!”), and filling their pockets, hats, maybe their socks, full on fresh garden greens.

Direct quotes from students include initial uncertainty and then excitement, running around to anyone who would listen that it was “Banana chip day!!!”

Or, when eating mango fruit leathers, “How is this different from how we made apple leathers? Can I make this in my oven at home?”

“I didn’t think I liked this but I LOVE kale chips!”

“Can I take some herbs home for my mom?”

 

 

Thank you to the Farm to Cafeteria crew for their support!