Farm to School Program Evaluation

1
Farm to School Program Evaluation
Short Course Life Cycle of a Farm to Cafeteria
Program CFSC Annual Conference, Vancouver 2006

• Anupama Joshi, National Farm to School Program,
  Center for Food Justice
• Gail Feenstra, UC SAREP
• Allison Karpyn, The Food Trust

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Your Expertise / Role in Evaluation

• Evaluator
• Program Manager / Coordinator
• Stakeholder / Program Participant, staff, board,
  volunteer
• Funding Agency

3
Why evaluate your program?

• Fine tune / modify program
• Highlight what the program does and how
• Provide evidence of impacts
• Contribute to existing knowledge in the field

4
What do you want to evaluate ?

• Implementation
• Impact

5
When to evaluate ?
6
Evaluating a Farm to School Program

• Student Knowledge, Attitudes and Behaviors
• Student Health BMI, weight, risk for obesity
  and other diseases
• Student Meal Participation Rates
• Student Dietary Consumption Data

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Evaluating a Farm to School Program

• Financial costs of program / Viability
• Overall school-level impacts
• Parent / Community Impacts
• Local Food Procurement trends
• Impacts on Growers income, collaborations and
  partnerships established, changes in planting
  patterns

8
Budget allocation for evaluation

• Depends on various factors
• what aspects of program are being evaluated
• size of the program
• outcomes being evaluated
• who is conducting the evaluation
• availability of in-house evaluation resources
• Suggested 10-20 of overall program budget

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Farm to School Evaluation Gaps

• Parent / community impacts
• School Food Service changes (financials, morale
  and knowledge of food service staff)
• Farmer viability
• Changes in dietary consumption data
• Long-term health indicators
• Contribution to Policy Changes