How Does Your Garden Grow?
How Does Your Garden Grow?
This article is part of a 7-part feature on Roots for the Home Team, a community nonprofit that supplies us with local, inventive, delicious salad concepts created by Twin Cities youth. Click here to read from the beginning.
Roots for the Home Team was created by entrepreneurial dietitian (and baseball lover) Sue Moores, M.S., R.D., who believes that eating well should be a delight, not drudgery or a duty. In creating Roots, Sue was inspired by community youth garden programs and dreamed of a way to take the concept a few steps further into the food chain, helping those same youth turn their produce into delicious salads sold to the community at large. Today Roots, the gardens and the youth work together to cultivate personal and professional growth so the participants can create the future they want. In Sue's own words: "Roots is a powerful catalyst for youth. Our teens gain courage, see a bigger world is available to them and discover new ways they can build their futures."
Sue and Roots have been honored over and over, and deservedly so:
- 2016 INSPIRING WOMEN AWARD – The Minnesota Lynx professional women's basketball team honored Roots founder Sue Moores for inspiring, motivating and encouraging others.
- 2016 MEDALLION AWARD – The Minnesota Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics bestowed its highest honor on Roots founder Sue Moores for her leadership and outstanding contributions to the profession.
- 2015 GOODNESS FOR GARDENS AWARD – Roots was one of just eight programs across the country recognized by Just BARE Chicken for garden-related programs focused on youth development.
- 2015 MARY ABBOTT HESS AWARD FOR NUTRITION INNOVATION – The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation honored Roots founder Sue Moores with its award recognizing innovative food and culinary efforts.
- 2015 OPAL APPLE YOUTH MAKE A DIFFERENCE AWARD – The folks at Opal Apple recognized Roots with its annual award to an organization in which youth take leadership roles in the initiative. Roots youth certainly do take the reins: they grow the produce at our partnering youth gardens, create the salad recipes, market their salads via samples and sell the salads at sports venues.
Kowalski's is proud to have Sue as a member of the Kowalski's team. She does incredible work both for Kowalski's and (especially) for our local youth.
