College of the Desert

The McCarthy Family Child Development & Training Center’s “Nutritional Literacy in Early Childhood Development” project will bring an exciting literacy component to our existing Healthy Living & Nutrition Program which encompasses a variety of projects designed to help families build healthy habits and good nutrition for their children. With the Anderson Foundation funding we will provide an educational program focusing on family literacy as it relates to health and nutrition. Our project includes visits to local farms and farmers’ markets, taste tastes in our McCarthy Community Garden, and our “Closing the Food Loop” project which includes soil to seed to plant to harvest to food to compost. All our health and nutrition projects are perfect vehicles for enhancing literacy for children and families. What better way to enhance and expand language than to connect it to programs and projects that matter not only to families, but are also exciting and new for children.

The McCarthy Family Child Development & Training Center is located on the College of the Desert campus in the beautiful Coachella Valley. In addition to providing early childhood education, the Center also serves as the lab school for the Early Childhood Education division at College of the Desert. The center provides early care and education to children of students attending College of the Desert as well as community families. The center has a very strong nutrition program preparing over 300 nutritious from scratch meals a day. To support our efforts we also offer a Family Community Garden to our families. Here they learn to actually grow fresh vegetables and also learn about good nutrition and making healthy choices for their families. The Family Community Garden is in its eighth year thanks to the generous support of the Anderson Foundation!