About Grow It Know It
Grow It Know It (GIKI) is an initiative of the Office of Service-Learning in partnership with area schools to grow solutions addressing food insecurity and food waste through project-based learning activities, particularly through school gardens, cafeteria composting/food recovery, agriscience, culinary arts, and more.
The Grow It Know It Approach
As a program of the University of Georgia Office of Service-Learning in partnership with UGArden and local schools in Clarke and Barrow Counties, Grow It Know It leverages resources, including a network of AmeriCorps VISTAs, to implement, sustain, and extend the projects of students, teachers, and staff that address food insecurity, food waste, and climate change. We believe schools are excellent innovation centers for addressing these big picture challenges on an everyday, community wide scale. School gardens support hands-on and deepened learning in key fields such as biology, agriculture, family and consumer sciences and history and extend the curriculum to real-life skills such as gardening, teamwork, marketing/communication, and culinary arts. GIKI’s gardening and nutritional programming is developed collaboratively with the principal, staff, students, and resources available at each school, but because there is a network, lessons learned are shared and become replicable.
Grow It Know It promotes and supports sustainability through food system projects, with year-round programming on school gardening, food recovery and waste reduction, agriscience, nutrition, and more, including the "Kitchen Garden Corps" summer camp activities. Since 2013, GIKI has been hosting volunteer events, collaborating on service-learning courses, and bringing people together in the school garden, school cafeteria, and the classroom. See more about GIKI's outcomes, awards, and recognitions here.
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