Southest Youth Food Activist Summit

By David Hamilton

The first Southeast Youth Food Activist Summit (SYFAS), which happened from February 13-15, brought together over eighty students, youth activists and young farmers from six different states for a weekend of workshops, community building, real food and action!  The summit was a collaborative effort on the part of many groups, including The Real Food Challenge, FLO Food (Fair, Local, Organic), a student group at UNC-Chapel Hill, and Crop Mob, an organization of young farmers in Central NC.  On the first night of the summit participants got to hear from Ellie Kinnaird, a state senator who has worked long and hard for social justice in North Carolina. She encouraged students to get organized and to lobby public officials on food justice issues, emphasizing that we needed to take the future into our own hands!

The next day we did just that.  Attendees participated in a variety of workshops, panel discussions and group activities that ranged from discussions on student ownership of the campus food system and the growing power of young farmers, to others focused on community organizing and organizational sustainability.  In the afternoon about 20 people got down and dirty helping the Carolina Garden Co-op build new beds in their freshly acquired garden plot.

On Saturday night, over 200 people, including SYFAS participants, local food activists, and community members enjoyed an evening of real food, music and dancing. The meal even included local chickens that were harvested and cleaned by student volunteers the week before!

On Sunday we got down to action, breaking into a number of smaller groups to focus on next steps. A SYFAS steering committee was formed to carry forward the work of the summit in the form of individual check-ins with participants and monthly conference calls. Another group focused on organizing students in North Carolina at the systems level and yet another met with the regional coordinator to talk about starting RFC groups at their own colleges and universities.