For most participants, the Northwest Real Food Youth Convergence really started during the early morning hours of Friday, Feb. 12, when folks set out on the long trek to Missoula, Montana. Some carpooled from as far away as Seattle or Boulder, or from Portland via school bus. We took advantage of travel time wisely: homework, napping, making new friends, and of course, dance parties.
At right: Despite long distances traveled, the convergence brought together a super motivated group, shown here doing a rowdy closing circle: “Now step towards the center with a big Yee-haw!” “YEEEEEHAAAWWWWW!!!!”
As newcomers arrived the University Center at the University of Montana Friday evening, waves of energy came over the registration table as people approached and left donning their fanciful nametags. We kicked off Friday night with a comfortable, delicious meal of potpie and roasted vegetables, followed by some fast paced mixers where everyone bounced around providing goofy facts.
Saturday morning started bright and early: we awoke from our church slumber party to bumble towards the fresh brewed coffee smells in the UM University Commons. After breakfast, the group woke up and broke up to fill the abundant array of workshops, including "What is it and how are they run: Co-ops 101," "A Chicken on a Tractor? Exploring the problems, purpose, and practices of the Whitman College Organic Garden and its Chicken Tractor Project," and "Organizing a Real Food Campaign." During time between workshop sessions, students networked, shared ideas and laughed. There was no shortage of fun or energy throughout the day!
On February 12-14, over 200 students from 35 campuses gathered in Santa Cruz, California, for the third annual Strengthening the Roots: Food and Justice Convergence. The convergence brought together a diverse group of students – from aspiring farmers to animal rights activists to campus dining employees – who were committed to creating a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. This event empowered high school and college students to actively engage in their campuses and local communities by providing them with leadership skills, successful models and case studies, and a broader network of activists and allies.
On February 5, 2010, over a hundred and fifty students and youth from Maryland to Florida traveled through driving ice, snow, and rain to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the second annual Southeast Youth Food Activist Summit (SYFAS). Friday night, author/activist Anna Lappe from the Small Planet Institute delivered an inspiring Keynote Address on the effects of our current industrial food system on climate change and personal health and the importance of the youth food movement for creating a more socially just and environmentally sustainable Real Food economy.
"There's nothing more intimate than the relationship between humans and food," says Hai Vo, 2009 graduate of UC Irvine, Real Food Challenge student leader, and winner of the 2009 Brower Youth Award. Hai's experience with real food has been extremely successful: he co-founded the Real Food Challenge at UC Irvine, piloted the Real Food Calculator for his senior thesis, and helped create a sustainable food policy that now governs the entire UC system, comprised of 10 campuses, affiliate hospitals, and contracted food vendors. Thanks to the work of Hai and his peers, the UC system will procure 20% real food by 2020. Read more about Hai's work at UC Irvine.
Yet real food has had a profound personal impact on Hai, who grew up eating school lunches through a program for low-income families. Poor nutrition in this food negatively affected his health, which led Hai to become an outspoken activist for food that truly nourishes. Hai's passion for real food also stems from his family's stories, which use food to trace his parents' experiences as Vietnamese refugees.
On Tuesday, October 20, Hai received the Brower Youth Award in recognition of his tremendous impact on real food in colleges and universities. The Brower Youth Award honors young people who demonstrate innovative activism and advocacy for environmental and social justice. The award supports winners' work through a stipend, mentors, and other resources. Learn more about Hai's award.
This award honors Hai's commitment to transforming our food system through grassroots organizing and his impact on the Real Food Challenge. Fueled by his "mission to understand the dynamic relationships between food and youth," Hai continues to propel the Real Food Challenge through his work as an alumni leader.
RFC wrapped up its summer with the Northeast training in and around Boston, MA, from August 20 to 23. The weekend was intense (literally in tents) with 25 leaders camping out on The Food Project's farm in Lincoln, MA. Despite some rain and a few mosquitoes (maybe an understatement), the crew--which included students interested in social justice organizing, sustainable agriculture, and media and communications--kept their morale high for real food and real change through a series of workshops, delicious meals, and fun fireside activities.
The training's first workshop set the weekend's tone when students created symbols of a problem with the food system that resonated with them most strongly. Discussion ensued about the importance of symbols in food activism and how we can use the RFC's Real Food Wheel as a way to conceptualize the food system. Students then tossed around a ball of yarn to illustrate the common threads that tie food activists together, creating an intricate web of problems with the food system that could be untangled only through multifaceted solutions.
In the photo: Students passed around a ball of yarn while discussing the Real Food Wheel.
The workshops that followed helped the group come up with such solutions. Through workshops like media and messaging, meeting facilitation and leadership, and overcoming oppression, the group generated ideas and actions to push for real food on their campuses.
On August 13-16, over thirty students from five different states gathered in Santa Cruz, California, for the Real Food Challenge West Coast Leadership Training. During this training, students discussed issues around sustainable agriculture and social justice, enhanced their leadership skills, and made new friends and allies. Most importantly, these students developed plans to revolutionize their campus food systems by launching real food campaigns this fall.
The training participants spent four days learning, cooking, eating, and dancing together in the Santa Cruz Live Oak Grange, the first organic grange in the country. The participants represented a diverse range of experiences – from student government officers to organic farmers to farmworkers’ rights advocates – and they shared their skills and knowledge in order to build the national student movement for real food.
In the picture: Takashi Yogi, the rental manager of the Live Oak Grange, describes the history of the Grange and their programs to support family farming and sustainable agriculture.
Northwest
Katelyn Hale
Lewis & Clark, '09
Katelyn pioneered RFC on her campus in September 2008 by launching a student group that negotiated a contract between dining services and a local, organic- and union-certified farm. Alongside her successes on campus, Katelyn served as a member of the 2009 Northwest Real Food Summit organizing team, where she applied her expertise in event planning and student engagement toward an outstanding conference. Katelyn is ready to hit the ground running this fall.
Lyra Leigh-Nedbor
Montana State University, G '11
After serving as Montana State's Farm to College Coordinator, Lyra joins the RFO team with experience in campus food administration. As an undergraduate at Green Mountain College, Lyra was active in promoting and coordinating her campus farm. As an RFO, Lyra will combine her experience and interest in farm-to-college programs with student organizing to push for drastic change in institutional purchasing.
California
Kelsey Meagher
UC Irvine, '10
Kelsey continues to make awesome progress toward real food on campus at UC Irvine. Among many other successes, Kelsey helped pilot the Real Food Calculator on her campus after securing a grant from the university for her research into real food. She also played a central role in organizing the 2009 West Coast Real Food Training. Her expertise in real food research, planning, outreach, and activism is a key asset for the RFO team.
Midwest
Sally Goodman
University of Minnesota, '09 Sally comes to the RFO team with a strong background in policy research and advocacy. After spending two years working with Food and Water Watch, Sally developed considerable skills in research and campaign organizing. Coupled with her passion for real food, Sally's experience makes her an ideal leader among student activists.
Allison Stewart Macalester, '11
Passionate about food activism since high school, Allison is active in Macalester's student garden and organizing around sustainable agriculture. Allison's background with student sustainability efforts and negotiating with university administrators makes her poised to take on and lead the RFC charge in the Midwest.
Northeast
Shannon Ayala
City College New York, '10
Seeking to "transcend the bulletin board" through effective student engagement, Shannon is eager to engage students in food activism in his region. He brings an invaluable background in student organizing to the team: from lobbying and rallying to dropping in to classrooms for presentations, Shannon knows how to reach students with his message. With a background in environmental justice activism and campus greening, Shannon will help drive the challenge in the Northeast this fall.
Southeast
Jordan Treakle
UNC Chapel Hill, '10
As co-founder of FLO (Fair, Local, Organic) Food on his campus, Jordan is highly involved with campus activism around food. Alongside the everyday demands of leading a student activist organization--from organizing to fundraising to networking--Jordan brings extensive knowledge of southeastern agriculture and food activism to our team. His past experience with RFC includes planning summits, working with administrators and corporate contacts, and student outreach. Like the other RFOs, Jordan is a great asset to the RFC team!
We are still looking for more RFOs for the Southeast, Northeast, and California regions. Interested in taking the Challenge beyond your campus? Want to join this awesome RFO team? Contact Devon (dahearn@thefoodproject.org) for more information.
From July 11th-14th, a group of students gathered in Ames, Iowa, for several days of powerful workshops and discussion at the Real Food Challenge’s Midwest Leadership Retreat. The training brought together students from Portland, OR to Jacksonville, FL (and plenty from the heartland!) to learn and share skills for launching real food campaigns on their campuses this fall.
For four days the team camped out in a Unitarian Church, cooking, eating, learning, and sleeping together. For some it was their first introduction to the Real Food Challenge, while others brought more experience organizing for real food to the table.
The group got deep early with a workshop about confronting oppression and generating power for positive change, themes that continued and propelled discussion through the weekend. Together they examined what it meant to organize.
The group also took two trips. The first was to Onion Creek Farm, where farmer Joe Lynch was happy to see a hardy group of volunteers pulling weeds and clearing fields after a week of near non-stop rain. The second trip was to Marshalltown, IA, where the students visited a meatpacking plant (shown right), the site of 2007 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. There the group heard testimony from former employees about the inhumane work conditions and the resulting health problems in their community. Former workers Rosa, Benny, and Ramona, and local activist and researcher Diego, pictured, gave the students a chilling litany of abuses committed by the company as well as their fight to get these abuses recognized and redressed. Despite an increasingly tense environment for immigrants, a recent victory saw more OSHA oversight and accountability for Swift managers.
The Marshalltown crew also took the Real Food Challenge group on a tour of their latest project--C.O.M.I.D.A.--a new program at the local community college to provide residents a bilingual certificate class in sustainable agriculture. Graduates, many of whom are immigrants with rich agricultural backgrounds, are rented subsidized plots to grow food for market, with the end goal of becoming independent growers themselves. In the photo: Real Challenge students listen to Ramona Lopez (center) explain her vegetable garden.
The Berkeley Student Food Cooperative (BSFC) was built out of a desire to offer an alternative to Panda Express – something that was student-owned, community-based, and a truly healthy and sustainable part of our food system. A group of dedicated students have developed a business plan and won over $100,000 in grants toward the creation of the BSFC, with hopes of opening our doors in the fall. The BSFC will provide fresh, healthy, environmentally sustainable, and ethically produced food at an affordable price to Berkeley students, using the Real Food guidelines as our purchasing standard. It is a member-worker owned fresh grocer, cafe and deli aimed at addressing current economic and health concerns, as well as global climate change and local student community involvement and leadership. It will highlight the human element in the food system through true collaboration with local farmers, other cooperatives, and our community.
So how did Berkeley students take down Panda Express? Read the motivating story of their battle, submitted by Alli Reed, a co-founder of the Berkeley Student Food Cooperative (alli.a.reed@gmail.com).
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!
For most participants, the Northwest Real Food Youth Convergence really started during the early morning hours of Friday, Feb. 12, when folks set out on the long trek to Missoula, Montana. Some carpooled from as far away as Seattle or Boulder, or from Portland via school bus. We took advantage of travel time wisely: homework, napping, making new friends, and of course, dance parties.
On February 12-14, over 200 students from 35 campuses gathered in Santa Cruz, California, for the third annual Strengthening the Roots: Food and Justice Convergence. The convergence brought together a diverse group of students – from aspiring farmers to animal rights activists to campus dining employees – who were committed to creating a healthy, just, and sustainable food system. This event empowered high school and college students to actively engage in their campuses and local communities by providing them with leadership skills, successful models and case studies, and a broader network of activists and allies.
On February 5, 2010, over a hundred and fifty students and youth from Maryland to Florida traveled through driving ice, snow, and rain to the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill for the second annual Southeast Youth Food Activist Summit (SYFAS). Friday night, author/activist Anna Lappe from the Small Planet Institute delivered an inspiring Keynote Address on the effects of our current industrial food system on climate change and personal health and the importance of the youth food movement for creating a more socially just and environmentally sustainable Real Food economy.
"There's nothing more intimate than the relationship between humans and food," says Hai Vo, 2009 graduate of UC Irvine, Real Food Challenge student leader, and winner of the 
In the photo: Students passed around a ball of yarn while discussing the Real Food Wheel. 
The training participants spent four days learning, cooking, eating, and dancing together in the 
The group also took two trips. The first was to Onion Creek Farm, where farmer Joe Lynch was happy to see a hardy group of volunteers pulling weeds and clearing fields after a week of near non-stop rain. The second trip was to Marshalltown, IA, where the students visited a meatpacking plant (shown right), the site of 2007 Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) raids. There the group heard testimony from former employees about the inhumane work conditions and the resulting health problems in their community. Former workers Rosa, Benny, and Ramona, and local activist and researcher Diego, pictured, gave the students a chilling litany of abuses committed by the company as well as their fight to get these abuses recognized and redressed. Despite an increasingly tense environment for immigrants, a recent victory saw more OSHA oversight and accountability for Swift managers. 
The Marshalltown crew also took the Real Food Challenge group on a tour of their latest project--C.O.M.I.D.A.--a new program at the local community college to provide residents a bilingual certificate class in sustainable agriculture. Graduates, many of whom are immigrants with rich agricultural backgrounds, are rented subsidized plots to grow food for market, with the end goal of becoming independent growers themselves. 
