Winter 2015 - The Food Project

What’s happening?
Now selling
CSA Shares!
Farmers, fables & feasts
Lincoln Spring Greens
Lincoln Summer
Metro Boston Summer
Lynn Summer
Beverly Summer
a benefit to support
The Food Project
Wednesday, May 6, 2015
Artists for Humanity EpiCenter, Boston
Buy online at
csa.thefoodproject.org
or call 781-259-8621 x21
Featuring Byron Hurt, 2015 Leadership Award Winner
For event details, sponsorship opportunities,
and tickets, visit benefit.thefoodproject.org
The Food Project’s mission is to create a thoughtful and productive community of
youth and adults from diverse backgrounds who work together to build a sustainable
food system. Our community produces healthy food for residents of the city and
suburbs, provides youth leadership opportunities, and inspires and supports others
to create change in their own communities.
thefoodproject.org
555 Dudley Street
Dorchester, MA 02125
617-442-1322
120 Munroe Street
Lynn, MA 01901
781-346-6726
Win te r 2 0 15
Youth. Food. Community.
Announcing Executive Director J. Harrison
WE ARE EXCITED to announce
that James “J.” Harrison was named
Executive Director on January 29,
following a national search conducted by The Food Project’s Board of
Trustees.
J. has served as Acting Director of
The Food Project since October and
has worked with the organization
for over 10 years.
“What is so extraordinary about
The Food Project is that the work
we do locally on our farms, at community meetings, at our farmers
markets, and at hunger relief organizations, is so personal and human-scale. Yet, at the same time, the
models and programs we develop
and share help shape youth leadership and food systems work across
the country. The Food Project is a
place of growth, transformation, and
hope, and it is an honor to be chosen to serve as Executive Director,”
J. said.
“We are very excited that J. will
lead the organization into the future,” said Dylan Sanders, Chair of
The Food Project’s Board of Trustees.
“In addition to a deep history with
the organization—and the stability that comes with it—he brings an
exciting vision for how The Food
Project will continue transforming
youth and our neighborhoods in
new and more effective ways.
thefoodproject.org/ed
Moreover, J.’s leadership style
models the core values of The Food
Project. He brings a passion for
breaking down barriers and making
connections across communities—
actions which are so important to
transforming our food system.”
Growing Together:
10 Lewis Street
Lincoln, MA 01773
781-259-8621
Happenings is published three times a year to inform our readers about activities and events in our community. The
newsletter design, graphics, and editorial are contributed by Heather Hammel. Additional editorial contributed by
Alice Poltorick. We’d love to hear from you. Please contact us with your comments at
outreach@thefoodproject.org and stay connected on Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram.
Learn more
about
Executive
Director J.
Harrison
online!
Youth programs on the North Shore come together
to learn, grow, and build healthier communities.
Youth make posters in a
Growing Together workshop.
THE GROWING Together Program on the North Shore. “There has been
—a partnership between the Food a lot of interest in seeing youth orgaProject and the Lynn Food and nizations collaborate to create greatFitness Alliance—is a yearlong em- er change in Lynn and the surroundpowerment and food systems train- ing areas. This new program is a
ing for youth orgachance for our youth
nizations in Lynn
to lead their peers in
and
surrounding
a transformative exThis new program
communities.
The
perience.”
is a chance for
three-part series is
One of the most
our youth to lead
designed to prepare
powerful pieces of
their peers in the
youth for leadership
the curriculum has
roles in policy, enbeen a community
community in a
vironment, and sysbuild activity, where
transformative
tems change.
participants are diexperience.
“The
Growing
vided into groups,
Together
program
given different re- Chloe Zelka,
engages our Root
sources, and asked to
Root Crew Supervisor
Crew youth in a
build a healthy comcapstone experience
munity. “It was great
where they are leaders instead of to see how people could connect on
participants. The program was creat- how issues of race and class impact
ed out of a desire to see more trained our food system after only two days
youth take leadership roles in the with each other,” said John Wang,
community,” said Chloe Zelkha, The The Food Project’s Youth Programs
Food Project’s Root Crew Supervisor and Community Outreach Manager
“
Your support makes our work possible.
Please make a donation today!
Return the enclosed envelope or donate
online at thefoodproject.org/give
”
on the North Shore.
He recalls a youth saying: “I never thought of the food system as being impacted by racism. But thinking about it, there are five or six
fast food restaurants by my school.
There’s also a vacant lot where we
want to start a garden—but it looks
like it will end up being another fast
food restaurant.”
For the Food Project youth leading the workshops, seeing transformation in the youth participants has
been very powerful. “At first, many
youth are hesitant to participate,” remarked Esmeralda D., 18, from Lynn,
who is part of Root Crew. “After we
gave the workshops, people become
aware of what is happening in their
communities. Raising awareness—
that's what we’re looking for. People
will say ‘I want to change this.’”
Learn more about the Growing
Together Program on page 3
What’s Inside:
Page
2
Cooking with Maria
A food system vision
Page
3
The produce route
Growing Together
with Rosa
10 Lewis Street, Lincoln, MA 01773
Youth. Food. Community.
Maria Barros: Leader, Teacher, and Cook
“BACK HOME IN Cape Verde, we
have a lot of vegetables. Everyday,
you have a little zucca,” said Maria
Barros, longtime resident of the
Dudley neighborhood. “When I
came to this neighborhood, in 1988,
and this country in 1985, vegetables
were very hard to find.”
For the past several years, Maria
has been leading a cooking class on
Cape Verdean cuisine out of The
Food Project’s Dorchester kitchen,
part of the Grow Well, Eat Well, Be
Well workshop series.
The series brings together neighborhood residents around growing
and cooking healthy food, and focuses on engaging the Dudley community in the creation of a local food
system. We caught up with Maria
before her cooking class on February
24 to learn more about what inspires
her in the kitchen.
“I love to see people eat healthily,” Maria said. “For you to be
healthy, it’s how you cook and prepare your food. When you cook with
herbs and add more vegetables to
your diet, it’s amazing. You really
feel healthy.”
Maria loves to prepare canja
chicken soup, rice and beans, and cachupa, a Cape Verdean stew packed
with vegetables and legumes, which
she leads a class in preparing on
this snowy winter day. She moves
around in the kitchen like she grew
up there—which she did. “I grew up
cooking with my grandmother,” she
said. But she hasn’t stopped learning
in the kitchen.
A couple of years ago, Maria’s
doctor recommended cutting back
on sodium. In the kitchen, she advises us that her cachupa is low on salt
and allows us to add our own, while
teaching about the ties between a
diet low in sodium and good health.
And she’s pleased with the progress she’s seen in Boston around the
availability of fresh vegetables and
interest in cooking with them. “Now,
every newspaper has a healthy recipe in it,” she said. And she’s still
learning new ways to cook familiar
vegetables. “Generation over generation, there’s always new things,”
she said. For instance, Maria grew
up boiling her collard greens and
kale. Now, she also sautés her greens
in olive oil, and makes kale chips!
As the class moves out of the
kitchen and everyone fills their
plates with cachupa over rice, chatter fills the air as people share their
experiences cooking and what
healthy and delicious food means to
them.
What does healthy home
cooking mean to you? Share
your answer on Facebook and
Twitter with #tfphealth
Farms
Wenham
Beverly
CSA Pick-up Sites
565
Farmers Markets
households with
CSA farm shares
22,211
pounds of produce
sold at farmers
markets accepting
EBT/SNAP benefits
Lynn
Hunger Relief
Organizations
Arlington
Somerville
Cambridge
Lincoln
Brookline
(Top left) Maria Barros, a Dudley neighborhood
resident and home cook, demonstrates how to
make cachupa (Above), a Cape Verdean stew of
hominy (corn), beans, and vegetables, served
with rice, at an Eat Well cooking class.
The Dudley community’s vision for a food system
2 Winte r 2 01 5
Trace the distribution routes our fresh produce takes from our farms in Greater Boston and
the North Shore to your plate, and remember to love your local food system!
Lexington
COMMUNITY UPDATE
IF YOU COULD ENVISION a healthy, sustainable
food system for a neighborhood, what would it look
like? The Dudley Real Food Hub, a collaboration
between The Food Project, the Dudley Street
Neighborhood Initiative (DSNI), and Alternatives
for Community & Environment (ACE), is leading
a community planning process to do just that in
Boston’s Dudley neighborhood.
To get the process started, youth from The Food
Project and DSNI conducted a survey to gather
information on how the neighborhood food system
works for local residents. The survey, which was
highlighted in The Food Project’s fall newsletter,
provided the basis for a series of discussions
throughout the fall in which a steering committee of
neighborhood residents identified a vision and a set
of priorities around food in the neighborhood.
The
committee’s
vision,
which
was
enthusiastically affirmed at a December community
meeting, states: "The Dudley Real Food Hub
From Seed to Fork
envisions a local resident-led food system that
provides access to nutritious, affordable healthy food
to all our neighbors, brings economic opportunities
to residents, and protects the environment."
Working groups of neighborhood residents and
business owners are now drawing on the input from
that community meeting to draft action plans on
priority areas, including: affordable, fresh produce;
healthy food in schools; vacant land for growing;
jobs and businesses; nutritious restaurants; and
composting and recycling.
“This food planning process is the first of its kind
in the city of Boston. It has the potential not only
to build a ‘food oasis’ in Dudley but also to offer
a set of tools for how other communities in Boston
and across the country can increase community
involvement and control of their neighborhood
food systems,” said Sutton Kiplinger, The Food
Project’s Regional Director for Greater Boston. “We
are excited to be part of this process.”
174,744
meals served at
hunger relief
organizations
with our produce
Downtown
Boston
Dorchester
Jamaica Plain
Wellesley
*Map not to scale.
Growing Together: Rosa, 17, takes what she learned with The
Food Project back to her community in Lawrence
"WHEN WE CAME TOGETHER in
the first session, we realized that we
all love what we do and are grateful
that the opportunity to do what we
do came our way," said Rosa D., 17,
from Lawrence, a participant in The
Food Project's Growing Together
Program.
Rosa is a member of Groundwork
Lawrence's Green Team, one of the
eight groups participating in this
year’s Growing Together Program.
For Rosa, the Growing Together
Program has been an opportunity to
meet youth from The Food Project
who are also working to build
healthier communities and bond
over shared experiences, as well as a
place of learning.
One question they tackled together was "How do you build a community that is active and healthy?" The
answers varied—what is good for
the health of one community doesn't
necessarily work in another. "We
learned that different connections
in a community impact the way we
live," Rosa said. "We don't actually
know until we are put into a community, what it means to be active
and healthy in that particular community."
Rosa is passionate about changing the lives of people in Lawrence
for the better. When she turned 16,
she jumped at the chance to get a job
and found the Green Team, where
she works to "promote awareness
of the environment and stabilize the
Lawrence community," she said.
For Rosa, participating in the
Growing Together Program has
been "really powerful." She credits
The Food Project youth with having fresh ideas about healthy eating.
"We take what we learn at The Food
Project and bring it back to the community of Lawrence."
T he Fo o d Pro j ec t 3