Nourishing Bodies. Growing Healthy Futures.
Our Food and Wellness program embeds its holistic model across all centers, ensuring children and families have access to nutritious meals and opportunities to adopt the healthy lifestyles that support physical wellbeing and academic success.
Why Start Healthy Eating Habits Young?
Children develop life-long food preferences before the age of three.
Half of obese children in the United States are already overweight by their second birthday.
Children’s relationship to food impacts their development in various areas: physical, cognitive, emotional, and social.
Adult behavior, through feeding practices, impacts the way children react to internal cues of hunger and satiation, affecting their innate ability to self-regulate.
Early childhood education centers provide the perfect platform to increase the availability and accessibility of a variety of foods, helping young children explore new tastes and textures.
Nutrition Education
CentroNía’s Food and Wellness Roots initiative offers educators and parents the tools to cultivate healthy habits during early childhood through nutrition education within the classroom and with families, and by offering fresh produce through subsidized community-supported agriculture and market voucher programs. For more information about Roots, please contact Victoria Reis (vreis@centronia.org).
Advocacy
Whether at a childcare center, as an entire community, or as a nation, creating a culture of healthy living is essential to the success of children and families. CentroNía advocates for improved access to healthy foods and nutrition education for early childhood programs when local and national policies are introduced or challenged.
CentroNía Recipe Box
Check out these tasty, healthy recipes.
NíaCentral
NíaCentral, a social enterprise subsidiary of CentroNia, was created in 2016. Through our business, NíaCentral, we offer catering services to early childhood education centers and schools throughout the region. Thousands of nutritious meals and snack are provided daily for all CentroNía centers and an additional 12 centers across Washington, DC. Menus follow USDA regulations and Healthy Tots Act guidelines to include a variety of fresh fruits and vegetables, whole grains, and lean proteins from local products when possible. Menus are rich in fiber and low in fat, sugar, and sodium.
Other Programs & Services
Early Childhood Education
High-quality, bilingual programs from 6 weeks to age 5.
Early Head Start
Home and Center-based high-quality care and education beginning from birth to age 3.
Extended Day
Engaging, arts-enrichment program that extends school-day learning for children ages 4 through 10 years old.
Catering Services
Cooking and serving fresh meals for childcare centers & schools in DC and Maryland.
CentroNía Institute
We provide professional development to equip educators with the skills they need.