HEAT Gardening is designed with the purpose of reducing chronic illness within adults and children by promoting the value of eating healthy foods, fruits and vegetables, by way of lessons which educate individuals about the natural cultivation of food through gardening.

Who?

• Schools

• Community Groups

• Churches

• Families

What do we do?

• Provide gardening lessons (starting, maintaining, and harvesting)

• Build and set up a gardening area

How?

• Education on the process of growing vegetables, from seed to table

• establish an onsite garden

Where

• An open area that receives full sun with access to water

What is needed?

• Committed volunteers

• Raised garden beds

• Gardening supplies (gloves, hand rakes, trowels, shovels, etc.

Why do we do it?

• What was once called "adult-onset diabetes" is now known as Type 2 diabetes because children as young as 8 are developing the disease.

• Developing diabetes in childhood years appears to cut life expectancy by about 20 years.

• Over the past 30 years, childhood obesity has tripled, and most overweight kids will continue to be overweight in adulthood.

• We may be in the process of raising the first generation of children in America with a shorter predicted life span than their parents.

• Most deaths in the United States are preventable, and they are related to what they eat.