Youth Environment Group: Healthy Food Now! Dinner

Vital Stats

Martha V

Detroit, MI

  • people helped 7
  • People Doing It13

The Problem

Detroit Michigan has experienced many economical travesties that have left the remaining residents feeling abandoned. Today there are social justice groups working to maintain the heart and soul of Detroit. One group in South West Detroit is working toward a more conscious community that recognizes the environmental devastation they have experienced. The group is made up of seven, strong minded, focused youth. In their efforts to develop a more critical consciousness to the injustice they experience today, these youth are also developing the knowledge and skills necessary to respond to health disparities. With the assistance of five volunteer graduate students from the University of Michigan and support from Del Ray Community Center executive staff efforts to raise awareness and increase community action in the Del Ray community is feasible. As an advocate for these youth and with the facilitation of the Healthy Food Now! Dinner a dialogue among the youth and community members would present the youth with the opportunity to voice their concerns about healthy food accessibility and health disparities.

Plan of Action

First, I must emphasize that this project will be organized and facilitated by the Del Ray Community Center Youth Environmental Group. As their advocate, I will present them with the tools, knowledge, and resources in facilitating the program. The youth will first become experts in what a healthy meal does and does not consist of. Next, the youth will be presented with the importance of research and become aware of various scholars, researchers, and popular culture representatives of the food justice movement. The students will discuss the variety of mediums used by food justice representatives. The students will be able to present what they have learned and gain confidence in engaging in discussion pertaining to food justice. Once the youth has gathered enough information on food justice the youth will engage in the Healthy Food Now! Photography project. This will provide a discussion and presentation during the Healthy Food Now! Dinner. The next phase of action would be to discuss food preparation plans. The students will be introduced to the health and cost benefits of a vegetarian diet during this time. Compiling a menu for the dinner would come next. After creating the menu, our youth will develop marketing promotion skills. Using online networks, sustainable printing practices for flyers, and neighborhood door to door invitation would provide an understanding of event planning. Then the youth will have a discussion concerning local, fresh produce consumption. This will lead to planning as to where the best shopping locations would be in terms of environmental and economic consciousness. Raising discussion concerning our food system and conscious consumption would reflect the youth’s growth prior to the development of this project. Then, closer to the event we would make sure that we had a confirmed number of guests, contact them to remind them of the event, and begin purchasing/collection of basic cooking materials, presentation materials, discussion preparation, decorations, utensils, and on the day of the event we would take a trip to the local farmer's market to purchase the produce for the event. During the event the youth would prepare the meal, set the serving space, and engage with guests during the dinner. The youth will discuss what they have learned, the discussions we held, the work they contributed to for the program, and their concerns. In all their work and effort, community members will see the leadership skills and power these young individuals hold. This would be the ultimate success of the program, in that the youth would gain recognition and other members in society would her their concerns.
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Discrimination
Environmental Racism

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