Honorees

She has been a GrowingGreat docent since 2013. For the last two years, she has been co-chairing the GrowingGreat program at Robinson elementary. As a GrowingGreat docent she was responsible for learning the GrowingGreat curriculum and teaching it to 3rd-5th grade students. Asa chairperson she has been involved in a more expansive way including participating in the inauguration of the GrowingGreat Jr. Chefs program which is now in its second year. Corina’s son, Dylan, was able to participate last year as one of the first classes of GrowingGreat Jr. Chefs. This year, she was able to help develop and coordinate the first GrowingGreat art contest held at our five local Manhattan Beach elementary schools.

Parallel to the her GrowingGreat involvement, she has also been the co-leader of her daughter Marisa’s Girl Scout troop for the last seven years. This year her troop of 9th grade girls are going for their Gold Award, the highest distinction a Girl Scout can earn, demonstrating leadership through creating a project with a positive and sustainable community impact. On the road to earning their Gold Award, the troop is required to take two journeys. One of the journeys they selected is called “Sow What?,” a journey that guides the girls through our food’s global food footprint covering how and where food is grown, processed, distributed and consumed. All of the girls in the troop are GrowingGreat alumni from Robinson, making this journey a very natural extension of their GrowingGreat experiences. As part of the journey, the troop met with Chef Diana Stavaridis (Chef D), as a well-known and respected community advocate for locally sourcing food.

The Sow What? Journey inspired both Corina and Marisa to explore ways they can celebrate this unique relationship between GrowingGreat, Manhattan House Restaurant, Chef D and community gardening. The result is the current mural project led by Marisa. When completed, the mural will have an actual vegetable garden in front of it, accented with the beautiful tiles painted by the winners of the GrowingGreat art contest. The goal of the mural is to inspire others to support community gardening, eat at restaurants like Manhattan House that locally source their food, shop at their local farmer’s market, and get involved with Growing Great.It is all in service of reducing our global food footprint and inspiring healthy eating.

Marisa McGovern is an artist and philanthropist. While she attended Robinson Elementary School, Marisa and her mom Corina introduced a Soles4Souls shoe drive to be done annually in conjunction with the Robinson Fun Run. At Robinson, Marisa served as an ambassador, modeling positive play behavior for younger children, supporting pro-social behaviors among fellow students, and promoting positive character traits. During the summers of 2012 and 2013, Marisa coordinated and ran a one-week summer camp for her youngest brother, Blake, and some of his friends. She called it “Fun in the Sun Day Camp” and modeled it after her days at Sand Tots Preschool, teaching empathy and encouraging developmentally-appropriate play behavior. At Chadwick School, she has been a member of the Make a Difference Club. Currently, Marisa and her mother are active members of both Girl Scouts and the National Charity League.

It could be argued that art is in Marisa’s blood. Her great grandfather was an artist, art professor and one of the honored Monuments Men who recovered stolen art from the Nazi’s after World War II. Her grandmother is an artist and consulted with Marisa on the current mural project. Marisa has worked in a variety of art mediums including glass fusion, metal sculpting, ceramics, charcoal, mixed media, water color, oils and acrylics. Painting with acrylics is her preferred method.

Her work in Girl Scouts exposed her to the unique collaboration between Manhattan House restaurant and GrowingGreat. It inspired her to use her artistic talents to share the good work of both Chef Diana Stavaridis (Chef D) and GrowingGreat who together created GrowingGreat Jr. Chefs. Marisa created a concept for a mural to advocate for Chef D’s mission to locally source food and promote community gardening, and also support GrowingGreat’s mission to empower children through science-based garden and nutrition education.