17 Year-Old Creates Healthy Cooking Camp

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Camp Cauliflower is a cooking camp in Novato, Calif., where young students are learning what healthy cooking looks like for one week.

Created by 17-year-old high school senior, Elena Dennis, the camp encourages young students to create healthy meals from the garden to the kitchen. Students harvest, cut, chop and cook alongside their older peers throughout the classes, all while learning what it takes to create a well-balanced meal.

Elena, interested in starting this camp to encourage healthier diets for younger classmates,  wanted to use her passion for cooking and nutrition in her school. She set out to make her dream of Camp Cauliflower become a reality in 2014 by asking food and nutrition director of Novato School District, Miguel Villarreal to help her start her camp.

After Villarreal gave her the thumbs up for the camp, Elena stirred up the right recipe of success. She planned classes, brought in two high school friends as volunteers to help, and reached out to local grocery stores to donate foods. She fundraised for donations from local businesses as she wanted to make the camp free for all students interested.

Visiting three local elementary schools in the Novato School District, she recruited five girls for her first class. Elena helped the eight-year-old girls experience what cooking and culinary skills look like in a professional kitchen and worked side-by-side with the girls as they learned about making healthy plates from scratch. Elena was also able to help grow the girls knowledge of local produce and harvesting fresh veggies by visiting College of Marin’s Indian Valley Campus organic farm and garden. Learning about cooking meant more to Elena than just stirring and baking as she helped teach the girls about nutrition through helping them learn how to read food package labels.

The young girl campers thoroughly enjoyed Camp Cauliflower and visiting the local farms and gardens. Working with young Latina girls and helping them understand healthy cooking and nutrition is helpful in creating a culture of health for future generations. Latina girls are more likely to be obese or overweight than their peers, instilling healthy habits early on may help decrease their risks such as type 2 diabetes, associated with unhealthy diets.

Elena says she hopes to expand the program to other schools in the district and to continue to encourage kids to “love nutrition and being healthy.”

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