Our Story

Michelle and Angela met during their first year at UCSB and connected on the fact that they both felt compelled to raise awareness on the importance of good nutrition. Their personal experiences with food as a remedy for mental and physical healing led them to contemplate not only food’s relation to the individual but to these larger systems of public health and environmental sustainability. In the following year as second years, they finally took this idea that had been floating in both of their heads and turned it into a tangible nutrition education program. 

After many long nights developing the first iteration of the current nutrition curriculum, they piloted the 7-week lesson plan in a 1st grade classroom in Washington Elementary School in Santa Barbara, Spring 2014. Over the next two years during their remaining time at UCSB, they worked countless hours to establish a solid base in the university and surrounding community so that they could ensure a long-lasting education model. KIN has since grown to a 500 student movement across 4 chapters. Their educational outreach has expanded to over 120 elementary schools classrooms, educating over 1200 students, as well as to workshops in universities, local libraries, and Boys and Girls Clubs. 

In Spring 2020, they set out to complete a comprehensive food sustainability curriculum, touching on a range of topics at the intersection of nutrition, health, and environment. The intent of this curriculum was to bridge the gap between these often disparate fields and that moving forward, nutrition will need to be viewed through a multi-sectoral lens in order to improve our public health and ecological systems. They hope to pilot this new curriculum in existing chapters in Winter 2020. 

Our Cause

While there is considerable research on food and planetary health, there currently lies a deficit in nutrition and food sustainability education in the US. It is this gap that KIN seeks to address.