Friday Feature: Project Flourish

Colleen Hroncich

As someone who isn’t fond of cooking, I’ve always hoped one of my kids would get bit by the culinary bug. Though some of them had phases where they enjoyed cooking, it never seemed to last very long. But maybe their interest would have been more consistent if they’d had access to something like Project Flourish in South Florida.

Founder Alicia Garcia and her husband are both chefs by trade. But with four kids, they found that this wasn’t the most family-friendly career. “If you know anything about food service, it’s nights, weekends, and holidays, and that is not necessarily conducive to life with four kiddos,” she says. So her husband took a culinary job at a private school, which is how they got into education. Eventually, he moved to a school for kids with special needs. There, he and Alicia worked together to develop a healthy eating program to better support the children. The parents were thrilled, but the kids were not.

Alicia knew she needed to get the kids more involved because that’s what she did at home. She started doing fun class visits and connected seasonal eating to the classroom and the menus. Soon, other schools were asking for similar programs. “We built this school lunch catering company. We’re doing food literacy, we’re doing clean, wonderful menus, and that’s kind of where it started,” Alicia explains.

The business venture put Alicia in many unique educational environments, and she started comparing what she was seeing with what their kids were doing. She began to see that her oldest learned differently, so they decided to homeschool—which had not been in their plans. They realized they needed to pivot. “We just saw a beautiful opportunity to merge the two because food so closely relates to so much of everyday life. It affects the way we learn. It affects our mood. It just affects so many things,” she says. “It was really cool to be able to incorporate that into all the core subjects and make it tangible, hands on, and fun.”

Alicia realized that other kids would benefit from learning to cook and that she could incorporate math and history into her lessons. Only a few families joined them at first for homeschool classes, but then she decided to host a summer cooking camp that was popular. When COVID-19 hit, her program took off—people were at home, they were cooking and baking more, and there was increased interest in new ways to connect. They decided to bring their program to the community on a larger scale because they saw its benefits, and that’s how Project Flourish got started.

“So many people were saying, ‘Wow, we should do education differently,’” she recalls. “And then, of course, everybody was at home—emotionally eating, baking, all of these things. And also, everyone was trying to get outdoors and really just soothe themselves. Of course, we incorporate so much nature into our programming because, hello, where is food coming from? It was just such an easy connection. And we were already doing kind of a nature-based, plant-forward approach with the classes.”

Project Flourish offers à la carte classes at her home and garden as well as group lessons at microschools throughout the area. Classes center around various themes, such as the Flourish Atelier Makers series that she describes as a “seasonally inspired makerspace, offering playful pursuits for nature-based learning.” The Food for Thought Schoolhouse is a weekly activity that incorporates math, science, social studies, and sustainability into the culinary lessons.

For the microschools, Alicia generally holds weekly classes built around specific themes. Her favorite is “Tasting Our Way through the Seasons,” where she shows the kids that just because a food item is available in the grocery store doesn’t mean it’s nature’s time for it. She also incorporates what the schools are focusing on by meeting with school leaders as she’s developing lessons for the year. “I will give them kind of an overview in the summer about what I’m planning and get feedback from them about what they’re trying to focus on and how I can incorporate that into the lesson,” she says. “It’s easy to do that because food can be applicable to all subjects.”

Though she takes an individual microschool’s needs into account, she has a common theme across the schools each week to simplify planning. “That helps with the budget,” she says. “And I’m trying to source locally as much as possible between things that I’m growing and also supporting local growers and farmers.”

Project Flourish has added a professional development option to help educators bring these concepts to their classrooms. It’s particularly exciting for Alicia when public school teachers take advantage of that opportunity because they’re often less attuned to alternative educational options. “It’s great to be able to reach kids in a public school capacity who might not necessarily be able to do something as cool as homeschoolers get to do,” she says. The professional development option can also support other education entrepreneurs who would like to create similar programs in their areas.

Florida’s school choice programs, which allow parents to direct a portion of state education dollars to various educational options, are helping families access Project Flourish. So far, families have had to pay for classes and then submit to be reimbursed. But Alicia is working toward being a direct provider so that families will be able to pay her directly through the online platform, which will help with accessibility.

How society thinks of education is changing with the spread of individualized learning options and school choice programs. À la carte options such as Project Flourish and last week’s Friday Feature, “Eye of a Scientist,” are giving more kids access to an education tailored to their interests and needs.