Food for All Youth Leadership Program
Live, Love, and Learn
The Food for All Youth Leadership Program is a year round experience designed for youth ages 15-17 who identify as BlPOC, LGBTQA, and/or are neurodivergent. Participants deepen their understanding of food sovereignty, land reparations, and racial justice by engaging in community food distributions, field trips, and listening to community food activists and farmers.
We are inspired by BIPOC led youth and food justice programs such as Soil Speakers Bureau, Soul Fire Farm, Roots Rising, Grow Dat Youth Farm, The Food Project, Dare to Lead, School's Out Washington, ACT for Youth, Teaching Tolerance. See course outline below.
Our Youth Program is a wholly independent program, fiscally sponsored by the PI Health Board of WA. Donations made to our Youth Program are considered charitable contributions and a receipt can be issued for your tax filing purposes.
Course Components
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Our youth will meet the local farmers and places where food and flowers emerge. Through a process of observation, hands-on activities, and dialogue with our farmers, our youth learn about the political, social, and natural ecosystems that shape our access to food and flowers.
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Each week, we feed our youth all across Seattle exposing and reinforcing their awareness of the vast multicultural city we live in. We patronize local, small businesses that serve South, Southeast, and East Asian; Middle Eastern, African cuisines, among others. As a part of each meal we will discuss the diaspora which makes this food possible in this corner of our world.
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Youth will have an opportunity to run pop ups and deliver food to last-mile distribution partners to address food insecurity in BIPOC and other vulnerable communities.
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Each intern will have several opportunities to use their imagination and creative selves to produce social media content that communicates what they have learned and how their activism has advanced food sovereignty. They will also recieve training on how social media marketing works (SEOs, analytics, etc). At the conclusion of our program, they will have a portfolio of work that they may use for future academic or professional pursuits.
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At the end of the season, our youth with participate in a celebration honoring our farmers, volunteers, and supporters. They will get to share their social media portfolios and any other works they’ve produced over the course of our time together.