DOLE Fruit Bowls' & Captain Planet Foundation Announce Winners Of Learning Garden Challenge

DOLE Fruit Bowls and Captain Planet Foundation (CPF) are excited to announce that Washington DC's School Within School is the Grand Prize Winner of the DOLE Fruit Bowls & Captain Planet Foundation's Learning Garden Challenge. School Within School at Goding will receive $5,000, a one-year supply of DOLE Fruit Bowls and a variety of Learning Garden tools from Captain Planet Foundation.

Beginning in January, DOLE Fruit Bowls and Captain Planet Foundation invited schools with existing learning gardens to enter the challenge. All schools that submitted entries were judged on how well they incorporated learning gardens into the school curriculum and the emphasis the school places on teaching students about healthy nutritional habits, food origins, and environmental stewardship.

"Here at Dole we know the importance of incorporating fresh fruits and vegetables into our children's diets, and we applaud the teachers at School Within School for encouraging students to learn this lesson from an early age. We are excited to reward them for the emphasis they place on the learning garden within their school culture and for providing students with the opportunity to prepare the vegetables they harvest in their teaching kitchen," said Stan Stuka, Director of Marketing, DOLE Fruit Bowls.

After the entry period closed, a panel of judges reviewed more than 65 entries and photos and selected five finalists. Chef Linton Hopkins, James Beard Award winner for Best Chef in the Southeast, selected School Within School as the Grand Prize Winner.

"I chose School Within School because, in addition to integrating gardens into school work, they showed that they are also focused on making the learning garden a viable part of student life at home," explained Chef Linton Hopkins. "If we want to change the way children eat, gardens must become fully integrated into their lives."

"We're thrilled to be honored by Dole and Captain Planet Foundation as the winner of their Learning Garden Challenge. We take extreme pride in the fact that our garden is a place of hands-on learning and community gathering where students engage in gardening, scientific observations, writing, and art, while learning about growing and eating fresh, seasonal foods," said John Burst, Principal, School Within School. "We're extremely appreciative of the support from Dole and Captain Planet Foundation and know that our students and families will really benefit from this continued investment in our learning garden."

DOLE Fruit Bowls and Captain Planet Foundation will also reward the four other contest finalists with $1,000, a year's supply of DOLE Fruit Bowls, and CPF learning garden tools including standards-based curriculum, lesson supplies, and a mobile cooking cart. The four finalists include: Belmont Day School (Belmont, MA), Oliver Wendell Holmes Elementary School (Oak Park, IL), Pacific Elementary School (Davenport, CA), and Terra Centre Elementary School (Burke, VA).

"We are excited to provide all of the winners with tools to keep their learning gardens thriving. It was wonderful to see how many schools around the U.S. understand the importance of using gardens for instruction. We thank Dole for their support of Captain Planet Foundation's Learning Gardens Program, and our ongoing mission to further children's understanding of and interactions with the environment," said Leesa Carter, Executive Director of Captain Planet Foundation.

To view pictures of the finalist's learning gardens please visit dolegardenchallenge.com

About Dole Packaged Foods
Dole Packaged Foods, LLC, a subsidiary of Dole International Holdings, is a leader in sourcing, processing, distributing and marketing fruit products and healthy snacks throughout the world. Dole markets a full line of canned, jarred, cup, frozen and dried fruit products and is an innovator in new forms of packaging and processing fruit. For more information please visit www.dole.com.

About Captain Planet Foundation (CPF):
Based on the critically-acclaimed animated series "Captain Planet and the Planeteers," CPF was co-founded in 1991 by media mogul Ted Turner and producer Barbara Pyle. Since then, the Captain Planet Foundation has played a critical role in helping to ensure that the next generation of business leaders and policy makers are environmentally literate citizens who leverage technology and information to manage and protect the land, air and water upon which all life depends.

CPF is a grant-making foundation that has distributed more than $2.5 million to fund over 1,700 hands-on environmental education projects with schools and non-profits that serve children in all 50 U.S. states and in 23 countries internationally. More than 1 million children have directly participated in and benefited from these educational projects. In addition to its Small Grants Program, the Captain Planet Foundation also supports its Learning Gardens Program, Planeteer Clubs after-school program, and a number of other science education initiatives that exploit the intersections between technology, innovation, the environment and personal action. For more information: www.captainplanetfdn.org.

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