Chairs squeaked as people got up to stick their bright pink and blue post-it notes on the walls. 

Phrases like “community garden,” “visiting local farms,” “cooking classes,” “vending machines with healthy food,” “horticulture after school club” and “creating nutritious meals to serve during lunch” filled the room. Representatives from the Northwest Indiana Food Council asked East Chicago teachers and school staff how they wanted to see local food incorporated in the classroom, and these educators had an abundance of ideas. 

“You always hear about farm-to-school, but usually in more of a rural setting,” said Veronica Jalomo, the NWI Food Council’s farm-to-school coordinator. “We want East Chicago to be a model for farm-to-school in a more urban place.”

The Nov. 8 meeting at McKinley Elementary School marked the first step in the creation of an East Chicago food access action plan advisory council.

The NWI Food Council recently received two grants: one from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that will help them address food security in East Chicago schools and another from the Indiana Department of Health that allows the council to connect school districts with local farmers. 

Ever since its inception in 2015, the Northwest Indiana Food Council’s mission has been simple — to create a food system where everyone has affordable access to nutritious, locally grown food. The council does this through educational events, programs that provide residents fresh produce and their Region Roots Food Hub. Launched in 2021, the food hub helps wholesale buyers like schools and restaurants purchase fresh food from local producers. 

Now the council is expanding into the classroom. Earlier this year the group received a $50,000, one-year grant from the USDA. The money will help the council partner with East Chicago schools to address food security by creating an action plan for William McKinley and Benjamin Harrison elementary schools. 

Jalomo said the plan has to come from the community. That is why the council is working with school staff, students, parents and other community stakeholders to create an advisory council. Council members will meet once a month and will be paid a $300 monthly stipend.

The goal is to create a draft action plan by March and then adopt a final plan by May so it can be implemented during the following school year. 

 “Lake County is one of the most underserved counties in the state and there are a lot of food access issues,” said Becca Tuholski, the NWI Food Council’s focal food coordinator. “For a lot of kids, this (school lunch) may be their only meal, so we want to make it as nutritious as possible.”

According to the USDA’s Food Access Research Atlas, much of East Chicago is considered to be both low income and “low access” which means residents do not live near a grocery store. In Indiana, one in nine people face hunger, compared with one in 12 in Illinois.

The issue is even worse in Lake County, where the food-insecurity rate was 13.1% in 2020; Indiana’s state average was 10.8% that year. According to data from Feeding America, Lake, Porter and LaPorte counties collectively, have 96,870 food-insecure residents. 

“We’re working to improve access for all so that everyone can have adequate, affordable, nourishing and culturally appropriate food that is locally grown,” Tuholski said. 

The creation of an action plan will also open the East Chicago school district up to other funding opportunities. Earlier this year the USDA announced it will award $16 million over the next five and a half years to the Illinois Public Health Institute and its partners, which include organizations in Illinois, Michigan, Wisconsin and northern Indiana. The program is called the Lake Michigan Food Systems Innovation Hub; starting this spring organizations and schools can start applying for grants through the hub. Jalomo said funding could go towards things like a new stove for the school kitchen, an on-campus garden and more. 

Rasheeda Green, principal of McKinley Elementary, said the school’s focus on local foods started a few years ago when staff transformed an underutilized section of the building into a small garden using raised beds. Green hopes the action plan will help grow the garden, encouraging involvement from more staff and students. 

“We want to give students opportunities to actually see where their food is coming from,” Green explained. 

The NWI Food Council is also bringing local food directly into school lunch rooms. The council was one of two organizations in the state to receive funding through the Indiana Department of Health’s Local Food For Schools program.

Using the Region Roots Food Hub and $410,350 in grant money, the council has been able to bring local food to 22 school districts. Schools are able to select what food they want online, then the council purchases all the produce from local farmers, delivering and providing it to the schools for free. 

The council has brought local food to the School City of Hammond, the School City of Highland, Michigan City Area Schools, the Duneland School Corp., Lake Station Community Schools, the Merrillville Community School Corp., the School City of East Chicago, the School City of Hobart, Valparaiso Community Schools and more. The council is working with several Lake County growers, including Baby Greens Family Farm, Grounded Earth Farm, Six Day Farm and Howe Farm.

“Farming has generally, in our state, been seen as something that is more of an older generation type of thing, but we have so many new, beginning farmers and so many diverse farmers in our area and we want to make sure that this is an occupation that is viable,” Tuholski said. “That they can receive a good, fair, just wage for their work.”

For more information about the food council’s work, visit nwifoodcouncil.org.