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Whether you are promoting fruit and vegetables under the banner
of Grab 5! or as part of another campaign, schools may find the
Grab 5! Pack useful. The contents of the pack were described on
page 3. The packs cost £40 but can also be downloaded from
the website for free.
If your project has the budget available we strongly recommend
you also provide each school involved with the following:
* Kick-start funding - While most of the activities schools
did as part of Grab 5! have minimal costs attached and, once set
up, are self-funding, providing schools with some funding to kick-start
initiatives can be a great help. It is difficult to predict what
activities schools will want to do, but for some typical activities
from the pilot phase, with associated costs, please refer to section
E.
Reward items
During the pilot phase of Grab 5! all schools were also provided
with reward items. These included pens and pencils (made out of
recycled materials), rulers, balloons, frizbees, stickers and carrier
bags. Rewards have been used very effectively in some healthy eating
projects in schools, such as the Bangor University Food Dudes programme.
This programme showed that, if used carefully and linked directly
to the consumption of the desired food (in this case fruit and vegetables),
they can act as significant incentives, encouraging children to
eat more and promoting positive attitudes towards that particular
food. Examples of how some schools involved in Grab 5! have used
rewards effectively are given in the Action Pack. Examples include
lunch time supervisors using stickers at lunch time to reward children
eating all their fruit and vegetables and giving rewards such as
Grab 5! pencils to children who buy a piece of fruit from the tuck
shop every day of the week.
In most instances, however, rewards, while popular with the children
and appreciated by the schools, did not seem to help the Grab 5!
project achieve its aims. Indeed, the evaluation of the Grab 5!
pilot project found that schools that used substantial quantities
of reward items realised no better results than schools that received
very few. Another problem with rewards is that they are relatively
costly. For these reasons, if you have a limited budget, the only
reward items we recommend are stickers because:
- As with all rewards, they are very popular with children and
school staff,
- They are relatively cheap to produce,
- They are easy to distribute.
- Schools can integrate them into almost any reward system they
have in place, whether in the
- school dining room, classroom or at a special event.
- They can be used in many ways, i.e. not necessarily as rewards
but also to brand school work, letters, display boards etc. that
are part of the fruit and vegetable project.
If you would like to investigate the possibility of providing other
reward items the following two companies are ones that the Grab
5! project used during the pilot phase. You may have your own alternative
contacts.
EMC Advertising Gifts - for all branded promotional items
including rulers, car stickers and frizbees - 0845 345 10640
Paperback - pens and pencils made out of recycled materials
(approximately £520 and £680 for 4,000 respectively)
- 020 8980 2233
Remember that the Grab 5! logo and graphics are available from
the Grab 5! website, www.grab5.com,
following approval from Sustain.
You may want to provide schools with some additional items, such
as those listed below. These are available for free from the organisations
listed, who can also provide some complementary information and
advice for schools working on food issues. Full contact details
for these organisations and many more can be found in the Grab 5!
Action Pack along with other useful materials.
- British Heart Foundation (020 7935 0185) www.bhf.org.uk
:
Catalogue of materials for schools detailing an extensive range
of materials including the Artie Beat club.
- British Nutrition Foundation (020 7404 6504) www.nutrition.org.uk
:
CD Rom 'Teaching Food Safety'
- Department of Education and Skills, DfES (0845 6022260) www.dfes.gov.uk
:
Eating well at School booklets (set of 3) (some of the information
is out of date but most of it is still very relevant and useful)
- European Food Information Council (www.eufic.org):
10 Healthy Eating Tips for Kids booklet
- Food Standards Agency (0845 6060667), www.food.gov.uk
:
Balance of Good Health posters and leaflets
- Food Standards Agency Wales (0292067 8910) www.food.gov.uk
:
Fruit Tuck Shops in Primary Schools booklet
- Sustain (020 7837 1228) www.sustainweb.org
:
Grab 5! fliers (x30)
- World Cancer Research Fund (020 7343 4200) www.wcrf.org.uk
:
Vegetables and Fruits - the Natural Choice booklet
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