Core El Centro Grows Nutrition Programming Through Kohl’s Healthy Families Grant

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Core El Centro (130 W. Bruce St., Suite 300), a nonprofit in Walker’s Point that promotes holistic health and wellness offerings in Spanish and English, has expanded their programing such as the long-running Food as Medicine class with a $30,000 grant through Kohl’s Healthy Families. 

Kohl’s Healthy Families is a partnership between the American Cancer Society and Kohl’s to support the reduction of cancer risk for families in southeastern Wisconsin. Initiatives include increased access to healthy foods and improving opportunities to become more active. 

Core El Centro formed in 2002 and moved into the Clock Shadow building in 2012. They started the Food as Medicine class a decade ago to help improve access to healthy foods and engage local residents, especially in the Hispanic community. Clients learn how to improve nutrition choices through healthy meals that incorporate more plant-based alternatives, along with herbs grown on Core El Centro’s rooftop garden.

“Food is a Powerful Healer”

Rocio Tronco Rodriguez is the program manager of workforce development and group programming manager at Core El Centro. “Our main focus here is to approach the whole person—mind, body and spirit,” she says. “Food is a powerful healer. Our community clients come to us to learn about what they can eat to feel better.”

Many Core El Cento clients have histories of health conditions such as diabetes, Tronco Rodriguez notes. Through Food as Medicine, participants learn how nutrition is key to managing glucose, and they become empowered to be conscious of what they’re putting into their bodies.

Food as Medicine classes, which are now free due to the grant (previously they were $8 per class), are held once per month on a Thursday. Dates vary, but the classes are a hybrid of in-person and online. Instructor/chef Mariyam Nayeri, who also leads yoga classes at Core El Centro, offers bilingual instruction as she demonstrates how cook meals that incorporate healthy substitutions and more vegetables. Examples include substituting rice with cauliflower rice. Participants can try the food and take leftovers home. Past classes demonstrated making healthy soups, spring salads, lettuce wraps and energizing snacks. Upcoming classes will feature healthy comfort foods and holiday dishes.

Core el Centro partners with Turtle Creek Gardens to offer community supported agriculture (CSA) boxes on a sliding scale rate according to income. Recent boxes featured sweet corn, tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, green beans, carrots and cilantro. Each box throughout the season also includes eggs. Nayeri incorporates ingredients from CSA boxes into the meals demonstrated in the Food as Medicine classes.

On Core El Centro’s rooftop education garden, they grow a wide variety of herbs and vegetables such as beans. There’s also an apiary that produces honey. A recent children’s summer camp taught kids about herbs and how to use them. The kids made pizza with parsley from the garden. Tronco Rodriguez is planning a class for fall focused on drying herbs and using them for tea bags and other culinary purposes. Core El Centro partners with Teens Grow Greens to help with garden maintenance and harvesting.

Tronco Rodriguez and the Core El Centro staff strive to get out the message that excess weight, alcohol consumption, poor nutrition and a sedentary lifestyle all can lead to cancer, heart disease and diabetes. “These diseases can all be prevented,” she affirms. “Our classes offer specific, targeted information and resources for our community.”

Classes are open to the public; one doesn’t have to be a Core El Centro client to participate. To register for Food and Medicine and other classes, visit core-elcentro.org/register-for-a-movement-class, or call the front desk at 414-384 2673.