A Crack in the Asphalt

Community Building and Food

1. The Edible Schoolyard: The Edible Schoolyard, in collaboration with Martin Luther King Junior Middle School, provides urban public school students with a one-acre organic garden and a kitchen classroom. Using food systems as a unifying concept, students learn how to grow, harvest, and prepare nutritious seasonal produce. Experiences in the kitchen and garden foster a better understanding of how the natural world sustains us, and promote the environmental and social well being of our school community.
2. Vancouver Community Kitchen: The Vancouver Community Kitchen Project is an educational resource centre that has been focusing on community kitchens for the past seven years. The mission of the project is to build community around food and create opportunities for people to cook together. The project creates educational and fund raising tools, training programs and cooking resources that empower and support individuals and community agencies in their efforts to start and maintain community kitchens. We recognize and nurture the power of people developing their own capacities to work together to find solutions. (Canada)
3. Slow Food: Through its understanding of gastronomy with relation to politics, agriculture and the environment Slow Food has become an active player in agriculture and ecology. Slow Food links pleasure and food with awareness and responsibility. The association’s activities seek to defend biodiversity in our food supply, spread the education of taste, and link producers of excellent foods to consumers through events and initiatives. (International)
4. FoodShare - Community Kitchens: When people get together regularly in a public space to cook, that’s a community kitchen. Community kitchens offer the opportunity to share skills, socialize and reduce costs by purchasing collectively. Kitchens are as diverse in their purpose and organization as the people who participate in them –– some groups only prepare enough food to sit down and eat one meal together. Others prepare several meals in large portions to take home to their families. One group of immigrants may want to get together to cook "foods from home", another may prefer to practice their English or learn how to make new foods. (Canada)
5. Feed Me Better Campaign: Jamie's School Dinners is all about making radical changes to the school meals system and challenging the junk food culture by showing schools can serve fresh nutritious meals that kids enjoy eating. (UK)

posted by Gemma Grace @ 9:40 p.m.