Our clients Hertfordshire Catering Limited (HCL) have launched a new initiative to introduce home cooking, ingredient growing and exercise ideas to the primary school students in their schools.
The Good Food Club has been created by HCL and Hertfordshire County Council Public Health to promote the importance of a healthy lifestyle to more children and families in Hertfordshire.
The first stage of the project has seen 15 schools across the county volunteer to run The Good Food Club activities, helping children complete the tasks in school food technology and IT lessons as well as encouraging them to complete the tasks at home.
The children in selected schools were encouraged to register to join The Good Food Club by answering a short questionnaire on the HCL website, asking questions about their diet, any exercise they do and their home lifestyle. These responses were an integral part of the initiative and will be used at a later date to show improvement in healthy eating and lifestyle changes made by the child and their families.
Once the child had registered for The Good Food Club, a membership pack was sent into their school for them to take home. The membership pack included a unique membership card for the club, four ‘Grow It’ gardening tasks, four ‘Do It’ activity tasks and four ‘Cook It’ recipe tasks. It also included several ingredient sachets including herbs and spices for some of the task recipes. Along with their membership pack, they were also given a step-by-step guide on how to register and log into their very own online Good Food Club account. Each child then had to complete all of the tasks and log their progress online in their unique account.
We worked closely with HCL to create a log in area for each registered child. The personal log in area allows children to use their personal membership number to access their tasks and record their progress. Each task included in the membership pack is shown online. Children can click on the tasks, read how to complete them and mark them as completed. In order for a task to be completed, the child must upload a photo of the task or ask their parent/guardian to sign to complete it.
The child has 12 weeks to complete all of the tasks (a typical school term) and can easily see their progress in the log in area. In the back end of the system, HCL have the tools to view and manage school progress by triggering an email that goes to the Headteacher at the schools that are behind in completing their tasks.
Once the child has completed all of their tasks online, the system will create a certificate for the child showing their name and all the task photos they have uploaded. The log in area remains accessible by the child to carry on using until the release of the next box.
The Good Food Club online log in area launched in May 2015 and we have seen great results in the level of interaction with over 1600 children registered to take part. The online area will grow to accommodate the introduction of each new box and there are plans to increase the number of tasks, activities and interaction online, with learning resources, games and competitions.