FOOD. Our goal is to improve the free food in after school and summer programs, and make it easy to find information about it. We’ll visit public schools and parks that have free food programs, see if gardens and farmer’s markets are nearby, and see if we can connect these.
We’re using public computers in schools and libraries to put FOOD info on maps
In Summer 2012, this information on the city website was wrong. No food was served at this location, PS20. Over 800 kids in programs at PS20, MS113 and other nearby schools had to walk over a mile round trip for breakfast and then again for lunch to PS67 instead.
We walked over to PS67, and talked to the Food Manager for SchoolFood running the program. She agreed to take food we grew at PS 20. But when we asked permission from SchoolFood, they said no because PS20 + PS67 are different districts.
So this summer 2013 we’re spending more time planning ahead. We’ll be visiting places where food is supposed to be served and mapping the locations. If food really is being served we’ll put that on a public map. You can add to it here http://goo.gl/maps/QPUDu
Where food isn’t being served, we’ll go to the city council and community board to fix it.
We will make short films, create petitions, hold events, create art, and organize politically to improve food. We’ll ride on the wave of interest of skateboarding, arts and music in our communities and use what we’ve learned about creating popular events to work on improving food, using similar ways of organizing.
Our goal is make sure food is being served where public agencies say it is. Public money, our money, is already being spent on this. We do not want to raise additional money to provide food, we want to make sure the money already being provided is well spent.
Then, once we know food is going to being served in a school or park, we’ll connect gardens to these food programs. If no gardens are nearby, we’ll help start them.
We’ll connect with skateboarders, kids using nearby pools, and families using the parks. We’ll get them involved in FOOD.
We’ll make detailed maps of problems in the parks that make it hard to grow food or use the area for playing. We’ll use these maps to make new designs to improve them.
We’ll use these designs to improve growing areas and build new ones, in parks and schoolyards where food is served. We’ll connect these gardens to the food programs.
We’ll work with volunteers at each location to grow food, and figure out how to get the food to the public food program at that location, on the right day.
We’ll help them harvest the food at the right time and in the way that it can be used best.
We’ll connect with local garden programs to keep this going after we stop being involved.
Besides giving the food we grow to the public food program, in some places we’ll see if we can sell it, and if the local volunteers can start businesses doing this. We’ll also cook food ourselves and serve it to people during skateboarding & art events.
The main goal of FOOD is to improve the food served by public agencies by including more local freshly grown food. We are not trying to replace the public feeding system.
When we do serve food ourselves it’s like a form of performance art, that helps move along the goal of improving the food served by the public agency. It’s not an end in itself. We are not trying to replace the public food programs that are already in place, but improve them.
At block parties, skate events, and art shows we’ll get new people involved, collect information for the public maps, and we’ll spread information about FOOD.