Choosing to Participate:
A Social Justice Service Project on Sustainability

On Wednesday, April 16th, I went back to Get Fresh (where the truffle class took place) in order to interview the founder/owner of the store- Caroll Lee. About a year and a half ago, in 2006, Caroll founded Get Fresh (located in Park Slope Brooklyn), based on her idea of “ready to make meals for busy moms.” She started out by doing research on where our food comes from, and through doing so “Omnivor’s Dilema” by Micheal Pollan, landed in her hands. From reading this book and others, Caroll learned that most of out food come from corn (such as corn syrup), and that corn and beans are the largest crops sold today in the world. However, Caroll “thought that people needed to know what REAL food was,” and in her opinion that is “food that is traditional, whole, and minimally processed.” In order to show people what this type of food really was, Caroll decided to have her new store only support small, local, family farms -all using only organic practices. To her, using the land as much as possible is supporting the generations ahead, and using it in a local way is simply a “win, win situation.” Caroll is simply “supporting people who are supporting the land,” the same practice as Alsiha Lumea, Peter Hoffman, and many others who are beginning to learn about the connection between our world and sustainability. Caroll’s goal was to make Get Fresh as sustainable as possible, so to complete that she uses wrappers that have been made out of recycled plastic and can be recycled, some wrappers she uses are also compostable, the cutlery is made from potatoes, and all of the scraps are composted. Caroll says that in reality “people want to be local, and that Get Fresh just makes it easy.”

I think that today went extremely well, and that the 5th, 6th, and 7th graders enjoyed our workshop on recycled art greatly. It was a little tight trying to fit in a well planned art lesson in 30 -40 min, but in the end i was extremely impressed by the outcome of the creations the kids came up with. I was also very surprised at how many things we had to offer that i wasn’t aware we would be having, such as Josh coming to speak with the school and us, and having soo many videos. I enjoyed all of the day, and am very happy to say that i think on some level we made a difference to how kids think about sustainability in our school, and hopefully they will go on to tell other people about what they have learned today, and so the chain shall begin! I think that the facts Josh dished out about what and how much we use in so little time, really affected me greatly, as well as the rest of the students at the assembely. His visit taught me a lot, especially about what i might be able to do to help. I am extremely pleased all around, and think that it is wonderful we were able to get everything done on time.
~lilly

On Friday the 4th (as well as on Tuesday the 1st, and the Tuesday before that), I have been working on my portion of decorating the door that is going to be shipped to New Orleans as a sign of hope from New York to New Orleans, and as a sign to keep going, and to proove art as a form of sustainability. We are creating this door to lift the spirits of those who suffered from Katrina, and to show everyone that we all care about what happened to them, and are willing and prepared to do something to make a change. We have divided the door into nine parts so that each group working on the project will be able to fill in a section with their own design. Two Tuesdays ago one of the art teachers halping us on this project (a man from New Orleans, who came here after Katrina to find a better life), showed us a film about the heritage of New Orleans, and how it is now, images of everything that was lost, and what different people are doing to help the situation. Our way of contributing is to create this door of hope. Our final creation is to be put into a show case, and I believe that hopefully, we will be talking about it to the public at some point. After finishing this one door, if we have enough time, our goal is to complete another, and so on, until we have touched the lives of many.

So far it has been very difficult to connect with our sutainability interviewees because of over crowded schudules, and their working habits. However, on April 12th my group members and i will be attending a truffle making class hosted by Alisha Lumea, the co-owner of Cocoavino. She will be teaching us her secrets on how to make dilectable truffles in a way that is helpful, and healthful for our environment. During the class we will only be using organic and locally-sourced ingrediants, as a way to proove that food can taste fantasic while remaining sustainable. Alisha also is going to speak to us more about her connection to sustainability throughout the course, and will be open to answering any questions that we have prepared. The class is from 1-3 pm in Park Slope, Brooklyne, and we are all greatly looking forward to it.

On Saturday, March 8th, Micki and I went to the Farmer’s Market to meet up with Peter Hoffman, one of the people we are working with for our sustainability project. While giving us a private tour of the market, Peter explained to us his general process in getting food for his resaturants (specifically Savoy). He showed us how he picks his vegetables and who some of the important people are who work with him every week. Peter introduced us to many of the farmers he sees everyday, and in turn they eached spoke to us about their relationship with sustainability, and what they are doing to help. Through meeting many of the farmers working at the market, Micki and I learned how difficult it is to do things locally, and how challenging it is to accomplish things the “simple way” (which i found slightly ironic.) While Peter was shopping around (this time only for his own family’s dinner), Micki and I got the chance to interview him on his connection with sutainabilty, and creating food in a healthful way for our environment. One of the things he explained to us (which perhaps stood out as the most memerable thing he said to us- for me), was the the name “organic” can be twisted. This had never occured to me before he explained what he meant. He said that cows can be tortured, and kept in cramped, un-healthful conditions, but fed “organic grass,” and “organic corn,” then the lable will read “organic meat” when packaged, when what you are really getting is tortured meat. He pointed out to us how a lot of the time, lables leave out things, making their produce seem as though it has better quality than it does in reality. We continued to talk and tour the market with Peter for the durration of about an hour, continuously learning more about his role in making our world more sustainable.

On Thursday, March 6th, Hannah and I met up with Alisha (the owner and coordinater of Cocoavino) and interviewed her for almost an hour on how she founded Cocoavino, and it’s relationship to sustainabilty. She told us about how she began working for a non-profit organization called IRC with her business partner Avril, she then went to a French culinary institute because she wanted to do something different, something that people would like, but also (i quote from Alisha)”something that spoke to the same values as non-profit work.” The idea of working with chocolate instantey came to her. So in 2005 she founded a kitchen that would do just that, and named it Cocoavino. From the very beginning it was all organic and fair trade, and Alisha soon found a source to buy from called SweetEarth, located in California. She believes, and i quote “to help people in other countires is to buy the goods that they produce,” this is one of the founding ideas of her organization. Alisha buys the produce in that way because it is responiblely supporting a good cause. Her chocolate contains no pestisides, and their goal is to have it be the cleanest and fairest product that they can produce. Everything that the company does is buy hand, helping our earth as best they can. Alisha went on to tell us about a typical work day, and more about her support for agriculture.