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CURRICULUM: Food Access & Food Justice

January 31, 2009 Leave a Comment

During the summer of 2009  thirty-five youth participated in a summer internship with the Umoja Community Builders (CB) Program.  CB is a rigorous, holistic program which engages youth in meaningful community change work while simultaneously developing their self awareness and professional skills.  Thirty-five students worked as interns, working 22.5 hours per week for 6 weeks.   

CB 2009 focused on the issue of food deserts and food justice in North Lawndale.  The trajectory of the CB curriculum was to begin by understanding food access as a problem, move from food access being a problem to an issue, research the issue of food access in North Lawndale and finally analyze and present research findings to stakeholders.   In the CB internship, a large focus was put on group work, critical thinking, and problem solving.  Once a week, CB interns worked with our partner, Free Spirit Media,  on creating a short film that documented their experience and work on food justice.

Each day of the internship consisted of multiple activities aimed at moving youth through the trajectory described above.  Attached are examples of two days of curriculum from the understanding food access as a problem unit of CB.  When teaching our interns about food access we engaged them through story telling and simulation activities, understanding that these methodologies were critical in making the issue of food access relevant and personalized for our interns.   Our curriculum is heavily based in dialogue, discussion, and reflection thereby creating a space for our interns to tell the stories of theirs and others’ communities. 

The attached curriculums are in draft form and pulled from the larger trajectory we were working within this summer. We have tried our best to pull out relevant activities that are adaptable to other settings.   It is our hope that the ideas and concepts behind these pieces of curriculum will both provide concrete activities you can do with your youth around food justice as well as inspire you to adapt and create new tools for teaching your youth about food justice.   We are happy to share other pieces of our curriculum with you. 

We also encourage you to take a look at our blog at www.umojacb.blogspot.com and our video on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RM7t132j0Hg

Curriculum Writers: Zarah C.,  William W., and Ilana Z.
Level: High School
Area: Social Science, Social Research

Download this Curriculum

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