The Youth Food Council Rocks!

February 07, 2012

This past Saturday, 596 Acres had the honor and privilege of presenting our tactics to the awesome youth of Flip the Table: the NYC Youth Food Council.

In the words of the Council’s organizers, Flip the Table “is training future leaders in the sustainable food movement, lending a problem-solution framework around which youth can mobilize and envision change. We do this by connecting fifteen Brooklyn-based youth within a network of urban farms, non-profit organizations and institutions while raising awareness about local, regional, and systemic issues surrounding food systems.” We are so impressed and urge you tosupport them on IOBY if you can.

Saturday’s presentation was to a packed room at Pratt Institute — the youth love this program so much that they bring their friends to check it out and on this particular Saturday, the wonderful folks from the vast geography of the NYC food justice movement who are serving as Flip the Table mentors were in attendance as well.

We got a sweet note from one of the attendees after: “i just wanted to thank you again for coming in and talking with us. i really appreciated what you shared and the work you are doing. its really exciting and hopeful to see and imagine the possibilities of getting our hands in the dirt in our own communities, taking agency in our own lives, and having rich foods be available to more than just the wealthy.”

Thanks, Flip the Table, for making an opportunity to share our work with a concentration of the awesomest justice-fighter in the City. What a day!*

*We were also at the Center for Architecture that same day, on a really impressive panel addressing freedom of assembly and the design of public space. Watch the video if you were enjoying Saturday morning elsewhere (Paula Z. Segal gives opening remarks at 1:02 and participates in a conversation that begins right after with the rest of the panelists).