About

Through the hands and minds of emerging food system leaders, FoodCorps strives to give all youth an enduring relationship with healthy food.

FoodCorps is a nationwide team of leaders that connects kids to real food and helps them grow up healthy.  FoodCorps service members aim to expand students’ knowledge about, engagement with, and access to real, healthy food.  They do this by building school gardens, teaching kids about food and where it comes from, and working with farmers and food service directors to source high-quality, local foods into school cafeterias.

Our Host Organization

FoodCorps Mississippi is hosted by the Mississippi Roadmap to Health Equity, Inc..  Mississippi Roadmap to Health Equity, Inc.’s mission is to achieve health equity by changing institutions to become supportive of the community’s efforts to be healthy.  Since 2004, the Roadmap programs have contributed to the overall health and well-being of approximately 50,000 Jackson residents, through its school-based initiatives.

Over the years, Mississippi has become ground zero for poor health outcomes caused by obesity.  Last year alone, the state spent $900 Million on obesity-related illnesses.  The Mississippi Roadmap to Health Equity, Inc., and FoodCorps have teamed up to put a stop to these health problems and disparities that disproportionately impact African American communities in Mississippi.  A key consideration for developing healthy children and youth is the need to link health disparity with social change.  Investment in nutrition and in education is essential to break the cycle of poverty and food insecurity.  Mississippi Roadmap believes that schools can make an important contribution to Mississippi’s efforts to overcome hunger and malnutrition, and that school gardens can help to improve the nutrition and education of children and their families in both rural and urban areas.  In this regard, it is important to stress that school gardens are a platform for learning.

Service members serve in Louisville with the Winston County Self-Help Cooperatives, in Greenwood with Greenwood Leflore County Recycling, in Petal with the MS Association of Cooperatives, in Shelby with M.E.G.A., in Biloxi with Moore Community House, and in Jackson with Magnolia Speech School and the MS Roadmap to Health Equity, Inc.

Why serve in Mississippi?

Mississippi is the birthplace of American music, a major arena in the Civil Rights Movement, and the home of many of our nation’s most prolific voices and creative minds – Richard Wright, William Faulkner, BB King, Tennessee Williams, Oprah Winfrey, Jim Henson, David Banner and Eudora Welty. Step onto soil in the Mississippi Delta and you’ll walk over agricultural gems. With the river flooding once a year and a moderate winter temperature, beneficial microbes continue improving the quality of the land throughout the entire year; there is no fallow season in our neck of the woods! However, the agricultural history of the state has stripped the soil of its nutrients and left a heavy impact on the socioeconomics in both urban and rural areas.

Most adults in Mississippi are familiar with the process of growing food because of their grandmas’ backyard gardens, their families’ farms in the country and the state’s agricultural and social history. And, as in many other places, most adults in Mississippi will agree that the climate of food has become increasingly unhealthy as more and more people steer clear of agricultural lifestyles, and lean on convenience foods to support urban living. However, there is a growing community of people around the state that are committed to healing our connection to the land and food production, through community-oriented agriculture. Volunteers from many walks of life have offered contributions to our new school gardens over the last few years. Bus drivers brought extra seeds; local artists painted garden art on scrap materials; nearby fruit growers donated trees and bushes; local non-profits committed to helping with work days; architects designed garden sheds and neighbors of the gardens offered a watchful eye.

 General Information

Please contact Willie Nash, the host site supervisor or Liz Broussard, Mississippi’s FoodCorps fellow with questions.