FSNYC MEMBER EVENTS UNITE KEY CONSTITUENCIES

Cookin' up the School Food Revolution 

Posted by Hilary Baum, Baum Forum
Schools, Food and Community brought together New York’s First Lady Michelle Paige Paterson and Department of Agriculture and Market’s Commissioner’s Patrick Hooker to address many of the 520 professionals, advocates and youth who gathered for the April 11th and 12th conference on the school food revolution. Portions of the First Lady’s presentation of her “Healthy Steps to Albany” program for Harlem middle school students were broadcast on four television networks bringing her message and news of the conference to over 500,000 viewers!

Schools, Food and Community was the second major educational event produced by Baum Forum and the Nutrition Program of Teachers College Columbia University and executed by a team that included several FSNYC members. Farm to school, collaborations in school wellness, and roundtables on policy, funding, and foodservice formed the backbone for the conference. Highlights included a general session on school food and sustainable development and another on the critical need for teaching media literacy, financing nutrition education, and presenting positive messaging about children’s relationship to food. The use of live performance, film, and video by professionals and youth throughout the conference illustrated the value of media as a tool-- in the right hands! --- to educate and explore the many issues under the umbrella of the school food revolution and the role of community.

Youth played an important role in this conference. The Learn Green NYC Coalition provided the guidance for its first Youth Forum, engaging middle and high school students with their mentors and a representative of the Mayor’s office on Long Term Planning and Sustainability in a brainstorming session about greening their schools and youth participation in PlaNYC 2030. In workshops, teams of youth from Bushwick and their counterparts from Mt. Eden presented documentation on food access and bodegas; talks by other groups of teams involved in peer education on nutrition and food systems in the Bronx and Manhattan were also offered; and still others presented their work in youthmarkets, farmers’markets, food preparation and community gardening. The closing general session of the conference provided an opportunity for several young activists to offer their own messages to the audience about the need for everyone’s involvement in creating a healthier food environment.

For more information about this conference and the people and resources fueling the school food revolution, please visit www.baumforum.org