January 2010

Stories from January 2010.

Andrew Wolf – Youth Coordinator, The Children’s Aid Society

    When I first walked into a classroom at Fannie Lou Hamer Freedom High School in the Bronx and said the words “food justice,” the students gave me a look like, “What did he just say?”
    Fortunately, their humanities teacher had recently discussed what “justice” meant with the students.  We broke things down. 
   “Something that’s fair,” one student replied when I asked about justice. 
   “So what does that have to do with food?” I asked.
    “Food that’s healthy,” one student answered hesitantly. 
    “People who aren’t hungry,” another said.
    Thus began one of the three Food Justice classes I am currently teaching for Children’s Aid Society, classes meant to add an advocacy component to the agency’s Food and Nutrition program.  
It wasn’t long before students were talking about processed foods, advertising, fast food, diabetes, and the way health is related to our food system.  In the weeks since my first class last October, students have argued about whether people have free choice in making healthier choices and what a just food system would really look like.  Some students were skeptical about the possibility for change.  We watched media produced by Market Makeovers, a group having a positive impact on food access in L.A., which led some students to admit that maybe we could have an impact.  Over the last few classes, students were inspired to write their own script and film a healthy cooking demo to be launched on the school’s Internet television station, Fannie Lou TV.  Students are excited to have their video be the latest buzz in the high school’s hallways when it is uploaded onto Fannie Lou TV in a few weeks.
 

Kristin Pederson – Development Associate, Food Systems Network NYC

Much of my job at the Food Systems Network NYC makes for poor storytelling.  Updating a website, crafting a newsletter, producing a conference call or organizing a meeting lacks dramatic tension and narrative appeal.  But this quiet world is occasionally rocked by lightning bolts when I realize that I know both an urban farmer and someone who needs an urban farmer’s advice for her after school program’s garden.  Or I meet a graduate student looking for nutrition internships and get an announcement about a program in community nutrition looking for interns.  I appreciate the moments when the complex, interwoven mycelium of the food systems world shocks me with the tangible fruit of new connections, like mushrooms after rain.  It keeps me interested in finding out what people are up to, thinking about what they could use to do more, and seeing ways to help others learn from their experience.  I can only hope for more these flashes of radiance, which I will remember long after I have reserved my last conference room and my quest for a better speaker phone and permanent access to the Network's e-mail on the office computer are over.

Robin Burger -- Community Liason to NYC Immigrant Communities, Hot Bread Kitchen

For the past six months I have been working with Hot Bread Kitchen, a nonprofit baking enterprise that employs foreign-born women and helps them transform their home baking skills and traditions into a career that can support themselves and their families.  This mission evokes cozy images of a close-knit circle of women connecting with one another and celebrating their diverse heritage through baking and sharing food.  While this value and concept are what inspire everyone involved with HBK—from our bakers, to our staff, our volunteers, our customers, and all of our supporters—the reality of running a successful startup enterprise and effective training program is far more rigorous, challenging and complicated than the fundamental simplicity of the mission may suggest. 

Several weeks ago we were in the kitchen with our full team of bakers, which included two women from Mexico, two women from Chad, and three recently hired women from Morocco. In addition to our regular production of tortillas, lavash crackers, and granola, we were testing some of our bakers’ recipes for the first time. The experimental nature of the day made the dynamic in the kitchen distinctly lighthearted and forced all of us to slow at various moments and pause to investigate one another’s projects.  Despite these distractions we managed to finish production nearly an hour early, and all took a moment to gather near the stove and taste the fruits of our labor: champurrado, a Mexican corn-based hot chocolate, and gateau, an incredible Chadian fried vanilla cake with a texture that falls somewhere between cookie and gourmet doughnut.  I would venture to guess that this was the first time that a Mexican drink met an African cake, and everyone agreed that the two happened to be perfect accompaniments.  We all shared a rare fifteen minutes of eating, joking and giggling that carried us through the rest of our cleanup and was a beautiful reminder of the power that food has to unite people.