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The Mission of the Youth Farm and Market
Project is to nurture relationships between urban youth
and their families, their communities, and the earth around
them by growing, cooking, eating and selling healthy food.
Within our three main focus areas of Urban Agriculture,
Youth Organizing and Cultural Nutrition, our goals are:
- To
increase youth competencies and qualities needed to be
successful in life and work
- To
help youth develop public skills through community building
projects
- To
set youth on the road to lifelong health using local,
traditional and cultural foods
- To
provide high quality, culturally-appropriate foods for
people in low income communities
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Goal 1: Increasing Youth Competencies
and Qualities
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provide youth with experiences that will increase the skills
and knowledge they need to be successful in life and work.
Focus is on three areas of competency:
- Work ethic/self
management (such as punctuality, reliability, and honesty)
- Personal qualities/team
cohesiveness (including taking initiative, helping the
group succeed, dealing effectively with conflict, valuing
diversity, and being courteous to customers)
- Food production/marketing
(growing and harvesting produce, cooking, nutrition, making
and following a plan, tracking sales, and setting up displays).
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Goal 2: Help Youth Develop Public Skills through Community Building Projects
| We build community and ensure that youth are perceived as valuable community participants who can make meaningful public contributions. In our view, communities are healthy when physical and social environments are both challenging and life supporting. We structure our program to:
- Employ youth skills and talents to benefit the community by creating productive green space and providing affordable, culturally-appropriate produce to low-income residents
- Build a web of relationships with community organizations and institutions to support youth’s community building efforts and personal development
- Provide opportunities for youth to define for themselves the important issues in their communities and support their efforts to organize around these issues.
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Goal 3: Setting Youth on the Road to Lifelong Health Local, Traditional and Cultural Foods
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We engage our Youth Farmers as activists
in making sure that traditional, cultural foods are represented
in local food systems and available to both local youth
and families. We provide high quality, culturally-appropriate
foods in low income communities by:
- Growing
traditional crops from different cultures on our farms
- Running
weekly farmers’ markets to sell this produce in our neighborhoods
- Setting
up Youth Farm “shares” with low-income families
- Working
with local food shelves to distribute produce to low-income
families.
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Goal 4: Providing High Quality, Culturally-Appropriate Foods in Low Income Communities
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We teach youth how to grow and prepare healthy,
culturally-appropriate food; and connect with schools and
other community organizations to build in experiences to
teach the importance of food and nutrition to lifelong health.
We set youth on the road to lifelong health by:
- Cooking
with youth, emphasizing nutritious foods from different
cultures
- Working
with youth to plant, care for, and harvest produce from
different countries
- Taking
youth on field trips to farms, restaurants, and other
businesses operated by different immigrant groups
- Teaching
youth about culture through growing and preparing culturally
appropriate foods
- Connecting
with teachers and schools to build in opportunities to
teach the importance of culturally appropriate foods and
nutrition to lifelong health
- Finding
elders from different cultures who will cook with our
kids.
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