Juan Diego Catholic High School Students will learn basics of gardening, nutrition

IC photo by Christine Young

+ Enlarge

Alicia Quillin program manager (right), Lynn McDonald (left), of The Tree House Fitness Center in Draper, a founder; Bill Rappleye, Chamber of Commerce CEO and President and founder of Healthy Draper; present Molly Dumas, advancement director of Juan D

DRAPER ­— Healthy Draper awarded Juan Diego Catholic High School with a grant to buy local and eat healthy.

“We had to develop a grant to combine nutrition and eating healthy, farming, buying locally, and community and the environment, to go along with Healthy Draper,” said Alicia Quillin, program manager for Healthy Draper, which is a nonprofit 501c3.

“The grant relationship with the school was to start a club within the school that would foster learning how to pre-plant a garden, how to grow a garden, and how to harvest a garden. And then next year at Healthy Draper, the students will participate as a vendor. That way they will have had all of the stages as an interactive teaching tool with hands-on experience, and learn about what they are eating and why they should be eating healthy.

“This also will teach them to question what they are purchasing in the grocery store whether something is healthy, organic, and is it something I want to put in my body,” said Quillin. “It will teach them to be proactive and forward-thinking consumers and taking care of their bodies.”

Those who selected Juan Diego for the grant thought the Skaggs Catholic Center was a perfect location because Juan Diego is the only high school in Draper, it already has an existing garden, and it is a kindergarten through twelfth grade campus.

“Healthy Draper started as a Chamber of Commerce program. It had done about all that it could for about five years, and then I made the decision to spin it off and create it into a 501c(3),” said Bill Rappleye, CEO/President of the Chamber of Commerce and also the founder of Healthy Draper. “It was a risk on the part of the board of directors, but we are almost back to parity, because we get a small percentage to manage it to keep the overhead down. We are almost back to what we gave away.

“The more we can do, the better off we are as a community,” said Rappleye. “We have all these good people coming together, and this is a wonderful thing. The Chamber can’t to it alone, Healthy Draper can’t do it alone, the insurance company, nor the bank can do it alone. None of us can do it by ourselves. Even as wonderful as Juan Diego is, they can’t do it alone. So by banding together and realizing that we are all responsible for our own well-being in this community, we can make great things happen.

“This is the third grant we have received from the Mathewson family,” said Rappleye. “We have been very lucky to receive $25,000. That is how we have purchased the greenhouse, and some of the money from the sponsorship is going to the greenhouse as well and to help fund the entire program. It is really a neat program, and we hope that other schools will pay attention and follow what Juan Diego is doing. Juan Diego thrives on community.”

“The official grant does not start until next year,” said Quillin. “So we have been dealing with Draper businesses as sponsors and the Draper community to get the garden started.”

“There are vendors here from several different health organizations, “ said Molly Dumas, advancement director and Juan Diego Catholic High School.

Jeff Williams, a vendor, is the coordinator for the Great Salt Lake Resource Conservation and Community Development. He said one of the programs they are involved in is CSA Utah (Community Supported Agriculture in Utah), which is a way for local consumers, people who eat food, to invest directly in local farms.

“What they do is purchase a share before the growing season starts, and then throughout the season the farmer delivers, to some location, a portion of whatever is in season at that time. Seasons typically last 16 to 22 weeks,” said Williams. “This is a way for local consumers to directly support farming in their community, and for the consumers to eat a varied, a healthy diet, that is locally grown. It is also a way to directly support farming in their community. We are just trying to build the capacity of that idea.”

Basically people buy a share in a farm and then on a weekly basis they receive a share of what is ripe.