Green Heart Blog

Intern Spotlight: Chris Pennebaker

Fall 2014 Intern Spotlight: Chris Pennebaker

Chris not only served as a Green Heart Buddy in the garden over the course of the semester, but was also responsible for coordinating our 6-week Heathy Hearts Cooking & Nutrition Class.  We are so grateful for all of Chris’s hard work and dedication this semester and are eager to see where her many talents will lead her… we know she has big things in store! Learn more about her experience in her guest post below:

Never underestimate the power of a nine-year-old and a cutting board. That’s what I learned as the program coordinator of Green Heart’s Healthy Hearts cooking class this semester. Six weeks, seven families, and a variety of healthy recipes were all it took to change my perspective on children, education, and my community.

As the program coordinator, my job was to make sure everything ran smoothly. I acted as a liaison between our Whole Foods chef, MUSC dietetic interns, and Green Heart volunteers. I prepped the “kitchen,” organized recruitment efforts, and constructed additional programming for the class. This fall’s class consisted of seven fourth graders, all eager to cook and learn more about the produce they grew in the Green Heart garden. We made healthier versions of everyone’s favorite soul food, including fried chicken, mac and cheese, and chili.

I was pleasantly surprised to see how involved the students were in class each week. They were always excited to help chop veggies or mix ingredients together, not thinking of it as a chore in the least. They tried every piece of food we offered, even if they thought they wouldn’t like it, and most of the time they actually enjoyed it, apart from a few who weren’t big hummus fans.

The family members were also very interested in what we would be cooking from week to week. They offered up their experiences cooking at home, and were pleasantly surprised to learn that they could make healthy food that their children would eat. Each week was more like a reunion of friends cooking and eating together rather than a lesson.

Spending so much time with this program allowed me to see that children can learn so much outside the classroom, and in my opinion, the lessons learned from the Healthy Hearts program will stick with them for years to come. They not only discovered why certain foods were healthier than others, but they also took away an important skill to use for the rest of their lives. In order to separate ourselves more from this fast food epidemic, we need to become more creative in the kitchen so that meals originating from the home become more enticing than those from a drive thru window. Healthy Hearts gives me hope that the future generations will not be overrun with obesity, diabetes, and heart disease. It’s programs like Healthy Hearts that start the change; we just need to make sure they continue to prosper.