This article originally appeared in Civil Eats.  Read the original version here.

By Christina Cooke

Youth have the energy, idealism, creativity, and conviction needed to move the food movement forward.

Nowhere is this fact more apparent than at a gathering of Rooted in Community (RIC), a national network of youth-centered food justice organizations. In late July, RIC convened more than 100 youth activists and 40 adult allies from around the United States for a five-day leadership-training summit in Greensboro, North Carolina. The gathering aimed to prepare its participants to advocate for resilient, equitable, and thriving communities—all through the lens of food.

Bevelyn Ukah, coordinator of the North Carolina-based Center for Environmental Farming Systems’ Food Youth Initiative, which hosted the summit this year, says she finds youth to be more focused on action than other organizers. In all-adult groups, “there’s a lot of meetings, and nothing is done,” Ukah said. “That can’t go down with youth, because [if it does,] they’re going to stop showing up.”

Since the first RIC conference in Boston in 1999, the leadership summit has become an annual tradition, and the network of youth organizations working for food justice across the country has grown in number and strength.

This year’s summit in Greensboro culminated in a Day of Action, a public event at a city-center park at which the youth offered a food-justice-themed puppet show and series of speakers and then marched with local residents through the downtown streets.

Civil Eats spoke with some of the organizers and participants about the most pressing food-related issues they see in their communities, and the best ways for young people to get involved.

TALAR HSO, YOUTH PARTICIPANT FROM MEBANE, NORTH CAROLINA

Age: 16; home organization: Transplanting Traditions Community Farm (TTCF), a farm in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, that provides refugees access to land, healthy food, and entrepreneurial opportunities.

What’s your experience with food and agriculture?

My parents, they’re Karen. We applied to come to America in 2008. We were refugees. We lived in a camp [in Thailand, near the Burmese border] that didn’t have a lot, but farming was a big thing there.

The food that my mom cooks is very different than the food I would eat at my school, because one is Asian and the other is American.

What do you see as the biggest issues related to food or agriculture in Mebane?

Not a lot of people know where their food is grown. Knowing about your food and where it comes from is important, because there are farmers farming those foods, and there are others helping the food you see in the grocery store [get] there.

Do you see any positive change in your community?

In my neighborhood, there weren’t a lot of Karens or people the same as me. But then they started coming into our neighborhood. Not that many people had gardens in their backyards before, but now I have five neighbors that have gardens in their backyard or beside their houses. The food my neighbors grow, they share with us. And we share with them. It’s a cool community with different vegetables, and everyone is giving each other different things. We’ve created a little community inside a bigger community.

Do you have any food heroes, people that you’ve met who have really inspired you in this arena?

Growing Change. They flipped a prison, and they’re turning it into a sustainable farm. That’s so cool! They have youth working there who have been kicked out of their homes or have been in juvenile. Changing from a troubled kid to a kid that’s helping others—that’s inspirational.

What power do you think youth in particular have?

Social media. It’s a big platform. I think we can change all the negativity on social media into a positive thing.

What do you hope to take from this? What do you hope to learn here?

I hope to have made an impact on others, and I want others to have an impact on me. I want to learn about what they do, and I want to learn how I can help them, and I want to learn how they can help me.

JOHN WANG, MEMBER OF THE RIC ADVISORY COUNCIL

Home organization: The Food Project, a Boston-based nonprofit that has engaged young people in “personal and social change through sustainable agriculture” since 1991.

RIC’s mission takes under-represented, low-income youth and teaches them to be food leaders. Why are the voices of these youth important to this movement?

A lot of folks don’t have space to develop their leadership skills. Rooted in Community offers the opportunity to see what’s possible—and to connect with other people that are also in that phase. People leave here super inspired. I see a lot of transformational change.

Over the years you’ve been involved with RIC, what have you seen?

In each region, there’s a particular issue that comes up that we use to focus the activity and demonstrate the kinds of actions you can take. In Detroit, it was water rights. In Albuquerque, it was indigenous people’s sovereignty. In Philly, it was creating a Youth Food Bill of Rights and trying to present it to legislators. There are all these different ways it comes together.

One of the things we’ve noticed is there are more formal and informal networks now forming. Before, we knew exactly who was out there [doing food justice work], and now, it’s impossible [because there are so many groups].

It seems like we’ve helped to build and launch these groups. How can we shift now to help support those networks or connect them with each other?

CECILIA POLANCO, ADULT ALLY ON THE RIC PLANNING COMMITTEE

Age: 24; home organization: a 2017 fellow with the Raleigh-based Jamie Kirk Hahn Foundation, working with the Center for Environmental Farming Systems, the organization hosting RIC through its Food Youth Initiative.

How would you describe your relationship to food and agriculture?

I have a food truck and catering company called So Good Pupusas and a nonprofit called Pupusas for Education. Through those two entities, we leverage the social justice food truck to give last-dollar scholarships to undocumented students. Food is how I practice activism.

Food has always been something that’s very closely associated with family, with my mother, with keeping our heritage alive. In college I realized I could use food as a means to make a difference. I learned a lot about cultural capital, and the cultural capital I had.

I share [pupusas] with people as a means to bridge communities and encourage cultural appreciation, to combat some of the narratives around immigrant communities or Latinx populations.

What are the biggest issues you see with food in Durham?

The summer I was starting my food truck, I read an article about Durham police cracking down on illegal food vendors. It was a story that stopped me in my tracks.

Food trucks have been in many Latino communities for decades. We would see them at construction sites and soccer fields. Now that there’s an explosion of the food truck scene, this community is being left out. A lot of people who have traditionally sold their food in nontraditional ways—out of the back of their van or at a certain corner store every Saturday, for whom this is their livelihood or this is their means of helping pay for their child’s education—are being shut down instead of uplifted.

What are the biggest challenges young people face in trying to get involved in the food justice movement? Where do they falter, and what might they do to avoid that?

It’s not easy for them to get involved yet. When you’re young, you’re not really sure what’s going on. Especially if you’re underserved, the opportunities to think for yourself aren’t as available. The more adverse childhood experiences you have, the less likely you are to be able to get involved in a movement of change. Your main focus is surviving.

[Young people] might not know what food justice is yet. But if you take them to a community garden and you start to talk about why community gardens matter—then they’ll already be a part of it before they [learn the term] food justice.

BEVELYN UKAH, COORDINATOR OF THE FOOD YOUTH INITIATIVE, HOST OF THIS YEAR’S SUMMIT

Home organization: Center for Environmental Farming Systems (CEFS), a research, extension, and education organization that “develops and promotes just and equitable food and farming systems” and runs the Food Youth Initiative.

What role do you see youth playing in the food movement?

It’s easy to get complacent as an adult. [Youth] will call you out. They remind me all the time it that doesn’t have to be done in any particular way.

One of the reasons RIC is really powerful is they acknowledge that any movement that has been successful has been led by youth. With the Woolworth [lunch counter sit-ins]—people talk about the Greensboro Four, [college] students. But a high percentage of them were from Dudley High School. I never really knew that, and I think those stories don’t get told for a reason. High school students haven’t been “tamed,” and there isn’t as much to lose.

What is it about this group of youth that has motivated or equipped them rise to leadership positions?

Their circumstances. At Poder Juvenil Campesino, for example, most of the youth that are doing advocacy work around migrant farm labor rights have been in the fields [themselves]. They talk about their own experiences. They’ve been doing a lot of work around child labor in agriculture and have really made moves to shift the legislation in North Carolina to raise the minimum working age.

Then, [when they can] see one another do that work, I think that adds a whole other level, because it’s creating an opportunity for collectives to form across these issues.

CEFS has been working on having a commitment to racial equity for a really long time. It’s something that’s very rarely done, uplifting the work of people of color in food systems’ work. That’s my professional answer.

How different is your personal answer?

The stories and experiences of people of color present so much depth and meat. There’s so much that goes with being a person of color in the U.S., because of our history, because of the U.S. history of genocide, colonialism, and slavery. Also, because of the resilience of people of color in reaction to those things.

You can see when these youth get together and stories start being told it’s like, “Oh my gosh, our connector is this marginalization thing—this being not acknowledged, not ever having a full sense of belonging, not being able to express my culture fully.” It creates a connection that is very positive. I think that positive connection is about resilience and humanity.

ALEXANDER SANDERS, YOUTH PARTICIPANT FROM NEW ORLEANS, LOUISIANA

Age: 18; home organization: farm fellow for Grow Dat Youth Farm.

What’s your experience with food or agriculture? What’s your food story?

Where I live at is a food swamp. Fast food is everywhere. When we first moved there, I was like, ‘This is awesome.’ I got all the foods I wanted. I could get a burger from here, some fries from here, some nuggets from there, some pizza down there. It was amazing.

But then when I came to Grow Dat, I was like, ‘Wow, this is really unhealthy for me.’ And it’s kind of got me in a system where I’m brainwashed. And I just keep coming back here, spending my money, wasting it. At the end of the month, you’ve spent like $40. Grow Dat has really opened my eyes to planning out foods and making affordable meals that are going to fill you up and be cheap.

What do you see as the biggest issues in your home community?

Probably the brainwashing gimmicks fast food restaurants like to use. Those burgers be looking A-1 on the commercials. But as soon as you buy it, it’s so small and ugly. But you bought it, so you’re going to eat it. You’re not just going to throw it away.

What’s the hardest thing about trying to get involved in changing the way people think about food?

One challenge is helping those who have less access—like no transportation or no money. They’ll listen to you, and they’ll be like, ‘Yeah, I understand.’ But they can’t go nowhere, and they can’t do nothing about it, because they only got a certain type of money, and they’re walking or they’re on the bus.

How do you expect to use what you learn at the summit back at Grow Dat?

The people here are really nice and open and welcome. I barely know half the people’s names here, and they just like “Hey, what’s up?” As a farm fellow, I’m going to deal a lot with college students and volunteers. I’m going to try to show that same love. Even if I don’t know your name, I’m going to talk with you. I’m going to show you how to do the farm task, and when we get to talking, I’m going to share some experiences and some learnings with you, and I hope you share some back.

DIAMOND MCKOY, ADULT ALLY FROM HOPE MILLS, NORTH CAROLINA

Age: 19; home organization: intern with the Conservation Trust for North Carolina; working as a team leader with Youth Ambassadors for a Better Community at a host site in Delco, North Carolina.

What’s your relationship with food or agriculture?

I’m from Council, a really small, rural community in Southeast North Carolina. I come from generations of farmers and sharecroppers. But my farm experience [is limited to] shucking corn and opening the peas.

It wasn’t really until I got to college that I started getting more into social activism and learning it’s not just about human rights, but it’s about food rights as well—equal distribution of food, and everybody deserves to eat. I decided to major in business and African American studies and minor in sustainability, because I was like, ‘Wow, there’s a big need in communities of color and underrepresented communities.’ What I really want to do is bridge the gap between sustainability and communities of color [looking at] how agriculture and food come into play.

In your home community, what do you see as the biggest issues surrounding food?

It would have to be the lack of resources and lack of access to fresh produce—true fresh produce. A lot of times at the farmers’ market you’ll see people selling “fresh, local” produce, but they’ll have oranges and pineapples. No—we don’t have that here. That’s a big problem, because people think they’re buying local food, but it’s not grown here. There’s a lack of knowledge.

The poorest counties in the state… were once two of the most profitable when it came to farming. But if you go down there now and you pass by some of the corn fields, there’s sand on the top. Sand. They use the pesticides to get rid of the weeds, so it depletes the soil.

Does anything stick out that you’ve learned at the summit so far?

I went to a wealth workshop earlier, about different ways to think about wealth. Oftentimes, we only think about it in terms of assets and how much money we have, but in reality, it could be in terms of impact.

How do you apply that to thinking about the food movement?

A lot of people aren’t interested in working on conservation because they don’t see dollar signs. I want to go back to the youth and say, “Hey, being wealthy doesn’t mean having all this money. Being wealthy is about your health and wellbeing, about how you feel when you walk into a room. If you’re breathing and you have your family and you have something that makes you happy, that’s your wealth.”

What place do you think these young people here have in the food movement? What do they bring?

They can change everyone’s perspective—they can take it to their parents, they can take it to their friends. I remember going home as a child and telling my mom, “You should stop pouring the grease outside, because you’re hurting stuff.” She’d be like, “Oh! Okay—I didn’t know that.” And she stopped. Some people realize times are changing and we need to make certain changes if we want to live longer. Youth have the power to make the changes we want. It’s all in our hands.

Photo credit, Jonathan Seelig / HomeGrown Heroes.

]]> https://cefs.ncsu.edu/puppets-headline-climate-food-summit-for-youth/ Thu, 27 Jul 2017 21:49:47 +0000 https://cefs.ncsu.edu/?p=10792

Youth participating in Rooted in Community’s annual food justice conference perform a puppet show focused on climate justice in Center City Park. (photo by Lauren Barber)

This article originally appeared in the Triad City Beat.  Read the original version here.

By Lauren Barber

Under the partial cover of Center City Park’s wooden pavilion, youth performers steered colossal pole puppets — faceless gray suits symbolizing big oil, giant fists in shades of brown labeled “People power” and “El poder de la gente,” and vibrant flags representing wind, air and sun — but not before a proper introduction.

Last week, the NC Climate Justice Summit hosted the annual Rooted in Community food-justice conference for youth in Greensboro. The theatrical performance, an adaptation of the NC Climate Justice’s roadshow, marked the third and final day of the youth gathering and highlighted economic, environmental and social-justice issues. Expert puppet artists from Paperhand Puppet Intervention showed a different group of young people and families to how to create the puppets earlier this year with the goal of enabling them to use puppets to shape the narrative of justice movements.

Bevelyn Ukah is the youth coordinator for the Food Youth Initiative, the local organization that orchestrated the event. She was among the mentors and organizers who honored Goldie Wells, interim councilwoman and candidate for District 2, and Christina Young, professor and director of public health and education at UNCG, for their contributions to furthering environmental and social justice. The honorees emphasized the importance of young voices in movement building.

Two days prior to the show, youth led their own workshops, many of which focused on how the power of storytelling — and amplifying the stories of others — is key to moving hearts and minds on issues like climate change.

Ree Ree Wei, a 19-year-old youth leader associated with Transplanting Traditions Farm in Chapel Hill, attended a workshop focused on how to implement social media “as a tool to send a message to people that has a huge impact and leaves them thinking about others.”

As a Burmese refugee, she said that this type of training is an invaluable resource as she and others strategize for how to use writing and other creative practices to effect change.

Young people from as far away as the US Virgin Islands attended the Rooted in Community conference, and brought their stories with them.

Event emcee and local youth leader Noah McDonald said he learned about a primarily indigenous Lumbee youth-led project to convert a prison into a sustainable farm, museum and recreation center in Scotland County.

“They talked about the history of chain gangs in North Carolina and how our road systems were built almost entirely by African-American and Lumbee men,” McDonald said. “You can go in the museum and learn those stories and feel what it was like.”

Though few participants knew one another when they arrived in Greensboro, they moved in practiced unison on July 22.

“The youth group performed this for the first time two days ago,” Alyzza May, a member of the local planning committee, said. “It shows we can learn things quickly together… to create solutions to climate change which, in part, is bringing down big oil and corporations that are extracting from our communities.”

To the pounding of djembe drums, hand-held xylophones and the rattle of snare drums, performers chanted, “We resist until we rise; We stand up for lives!” and proudly hoisted their battle flags. After several scenes in which the giant hands labeled “people power” met the suits, pipelines and methane gas, three immense-yet-elegant green giants with human-like faces graced the outdoor stage. Flowing clothes of various shades of green draped the oversized puppets effervescent leaf hands and large, pink flowers affixed to the flipside of the puppets’ faces seemed to symbolize hopefulness, if not simply a reverence for nature.

At the finale, youth performers paraded their puppets around the periphery of Center City Park while the chorus of djembe drums and chanting continued. The encircling march indicated to everyone within its path that they are now part of this story.

As one of the youth’s props urged, the time had come to “look, listen and decide.”

Dimitrius Eliza, who came from Camden, New Jersey, to the summit on food systems and inequality in Greensboro, North Carolina, sits in a tree.

This article originally appeared in Youth Today.  Read the original version here.

By Stell Simonton

About 100 high school youth from community and out-of-school organizations gathered along with their adult allies in Greensboro, North Carolina, this past weekend for a conference on food systems and inequality.

Sponsored by the Rooted In Community National Network, it focused on issues ranging from environmental degradation to lack of access to healthy food to poor working conditions in agriculture. Rooted in Community encourages young people from low-income and historically excluded communities to develop skills to take leadership for food justice, according to the organization.

Dimitrius Eliza, a recent high school graduate, came from Camden, New Jersey.

“Camden is a food desert,” he said.

“There’s a ton of corner stores,” he said, but only one supermarket in the area.

He said it is far easier for people to find a honey bun and a drink at a corner store than find transportation to a full grocery store.

He works at the Center for Environmental Transformation, where he teaches other youth about gardening, cooking and nutrition. The center has an urban garden, a program for children and offers job training for youth.

Eliza said he is also concerned about pollution in his hometown — air pollution from a trash incinerator only a quarter-mile from his home and water pollution from the city’s aging sewer system. These problems aren’t getting people’s attention, he said.

“I feel like we’re being overlooked a lot,” he said.

The 19th annual Rooted in Community National Youth Leadership Summit, which draws youth from as far away as Canada and the Virgin Islands, offered workshops, field trips and service projects, said Cecilia Polanco. She is a recent graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and led a social media workshop for youth at the conference.

In March, Polanco started a nonprofit food truck venture whose proceeds go to scholarships for undocumented youth.

She’s concerned about Latino food vendors in North Carolina’s Triangle area, whose traditional small businesses have been curtailed by increased regulation.

These vendors have been working in the area for a long time, but the explosion in popularity of food trucks has added new laws, Polanco said. Vendors who might sell from their car trunk at church can’t keep up with the regulations or they can’t communicate because they don’t speak English, she said.

Participants at the conference also visited Transplanting Traditions Community Farm in Chapel Hill, which helps refugee farmers transfer their skills to a new country. In 2016, 8 acres were cultivated by 40 families, according to the organization’s website. Produce is sold at farmers markets and through subscription to individuals.

The farm provides training for adults, internships for refugee youth and has a summer camp for children. Its youth collaborative made a video about the farm in 2014.

Participants visited Stagville Plantation near Durham, North Carolina too. It was one of the largest plantations in the antebellum South with about 900 enslaved people.

“A discussion around food justice can’t be had without talking about race and issues around racial inequality,” Polanco said.

The local group hosting the conference was the Food Youth Initiative, located at Center for Environmental Farming Systems, a partnership of North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, North Carolina State University and the state agriculture department.

August 9, 2016:

Media Contact: Tes Thraves, CEFS Youth and Community-Based Food Systems Coordinator, tes_thraves@ncsu.edu or 919-619-8897

Raleigh, NC:  The Center for Environmental Farming Systems’ Food Youth Initiative (FYI) has been awarded the 2016 Opal Mann Green Engagement award by NC State University’s Office of Outreach & Engagement.  The award recognizes leadership and dedication to the values of using democracy in the classroom, in the community, and at home; creating inclusionary teams; and community­ based learning and mutually­ beneficial action around local issues valued by community members.  CEFS was also awarded the Opal Mann Green Engagement award in 2012.

Food Youth Initiative is a statewide collaborative network that supports and connects grassroots youth organizations doing food justice work in their local communities.  Housed at CEFS, the network includes Conetoe Family Life Center (Conetoe, NC), Growing Change (Scotland/Robeson/Hoke Counties), Poder Juvenil Campesino (Lenior/Greene/Wayne Counties), and Transplanting Traditions (Orange Country).  FYI youth envision and support the advancement of a just food system, working to transform their communities through programs and policy work.

“We are so honored to receive this recognition for our FYI program and gratefully accept it on behalf of all the youth in the FYI network who inspire us daily with their steadfast dedication to their own communities and their boundless creativity.  Their work breaks down the inequities they continually face and creates possibilities and opportunities for them as individuals as well as for change in the way food systems function. We hope many more will listen to their stories and pass forward the optimism and power their work embodies,” said Tes Thraves, CEFS’ Youth and Community-Based Food Systems Coordinator.

Noran Sanford, Growing Change Board Chair, said “FYI has provided a model to support, engage, collaborate with, and provide resources for the most besieged areas of our state.  FYI not only brings underserved youth to the NC State campus, it brings NC State resources to our besieged counties.  FYI personifies why the mission of our land grant universities is as essential today as it was in 1862/1890.”

For more information about Food Youth Initiative please visit https://cefs.ncsu.edu/youth/food-youth-initiative

The Opal Mann Green Engagement Award rewards authentic teamwork across the organizational structures within the university and community, reflecting programs that have been valued by the community and mutually beneficial to partners. For more information please visit https://oe.ncsu.edu/about-us/opal-mann-green-engagement-award/

The Center for Environmental Farming Systems is a partnership of NC State University, NC Agricultural and Technical State University and the NC Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services. CEFS develops and promotes just and equitable food and farming systems that conserve natural resources, strengthen communities, improve health outcomes, and provide economic opportunities in North Carolina and beyond. For more information, please visit www.cefs.ncsu.edu.

Download this press release as a printable PDF

By Tes Thraves, CEFS’ Youth and Community-Based Food Systems Coordinator

During CEFS’ recent Farm to Fork Picnic Weekend, CEFS awarded its very first Local Food Heroes Awards.  Reflecting the youth focus of this year’s Farm to Fork Picnic Weekend, honorees are all youth and their youth organizers who work in partnership with CEFS.

Honoring these youth also honors the elders and communities behind them, as their work is deeply intergenerational. Their work reflects the dedication to place and community instilled in them. They are proud of where they come from and are dedicated to one of CEFS’ core mission elements: building strong communities. They are in fact living proof of strong communities.

How often we talk about young people as “emerging leaders,” but they are more than future leaders  – they are current change makers. They have been doing amazing work in their own communities for years, changing things for the better—connecting the dots between concepts about local food and lived realities of how local food can shine a light on injustice and increase equity in day-to-day life. They understand systems, and collaboration, and intersectionality.  And they are awe-inspiring!

Emilee Register

 Emilee Register is a Wayne County teen who is making a real impact on her community. Emilee is a graduate of CEFS’ SWARM (Students Working for an Agricultural Revolutionary Movement) program, a group of youth food activists working to change their community in Goldsboro NC. Emilee became a fierce yet humble leader and food justice activist with a passion for agriculture. She is one of a few African-American Future Farmers of America members at her school, participated in North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University’s Institute for Future Ag Leaders, and was a Park Scholar semi-finalist who continues to volunteer and lead activities at the Wayne County Public Library’s community garden.  Emilee is a Local S’hero!

Transplanting Traditions

The teen youth group at Transplanting Traditions is all about possibilities.  These youth honor where they come from, seek out current leadership opportunities, and make change in their community.  The entire youth group at Transplanting Traditions has done amazing documentary work with elders around foodways and culture: audio work, photography, and video. They host dinners and lead tours at the farm and they help run the farmers market stands, creating avenues for the broader community to understand their culture.  Participants of CEFS’ Food Youth Initiative, we wish to honor all the youth involved at Transplanting Traditions for their endless innovation and energy to make things happen, their leadership within their community and beyond, and their drive and optimism towards making their community strong.

Poder Juvenil Campesino, “Rural Youth Power” in English, is a group of middle and high schoolers from farmworker families in Eastern North Carolina.  They have worked diligently on everything from national lobbying in DC for the protection and rights of children working in the fields to local education in their community, holding panel discussions called “Youth Speaks” for educators and policy makers about the issues faced by farmworker communities.  They are professionally trained as photographers and have a nationally traveling exhibit that puts both struggles and resilience in print. They have led food drives and started gardens and built chicken coops for their neighbors.  Always, they inspire and educate: each other, the other youth groups in CEFS’ Food Youth Initiative, and everyone who meets them. We are all lucky to have them in our state and appreciate them endlessly as Local Food Heroes.

The youth group at Conetoe Family Life Center is part of the larger healthy living effort at their church in Conetoe (Edgecombe County), North Carolina, and participants in CEFS’ Food Youth Initiative.  The whole congregation works a small sustainable farm and cooks healthy meals for members, and the youth are a vital force in the farm work and anti-hunger efforts.  They also raise bees and teach bee keeping, as well as market and sell their honey. They lead workshops for other youth and adults on everything from growing food to composting and they gather weekly to support each other, to keep steady in addressing community as well as individual goals.  They are part of. Reverend Joyner and all the many youth at CFLC understand and appreciate growing food as a vehicle for social change and we thank them all for seeing the deep value in rooting change in the soil of this earth.

The young men of Growing Change are flipping a closed prison in Wagram North Carolina into a sustainable farm and education center.  And they are flipping their lives around while they do it.  These youth are addressing the root causes of inequities in our food system, and making opportunity out of some of the harshest problems faced in rural North Carolina.  They’ve also created a comic book about their experiences, storying their lives and their successes in ways that can really reach other youth facing similar struggles.  They do this work in an intentionally multi-racial group—working together as African-American, Latino, Native American, and white youth.  Part of CEFS’ Food Youth Initiative, they see themselves as “part of the solution”, and so do we.

Josie Walker

Josie Walker is a recent graduate of N.C. A&T in Agricultural and Environmental Sciences. She grew up in Trenton (Jones County), North Carolina and is devoted to both the concept and reality of sustainability. Josie is skillful in teaching the benefits of local foods and believes that people are more receptive to new ideas if they see the relevance to their own lives. While at N.C. A&T, she served as the NC 10% Campaign Local Food Ambassador and built bridges between students and faculty/staff from multiple departments as well as the local community and Cooperative Extension. Josie also worked to connect Eastern North Carolina farmers with new markets through an NC Growing Together Local Food Supply Chain Apprenticeship with Feast Down East.  She is yet another S’hero and we are awed by how many she has inspired, including us.

Congratulations to all of this year’s Local Food Heroes!  Thanks for everything you do!