Our Methodology, approach and definitions

We intentionally combine outdoor garden education with academics, micro-enterprise and green jobs skills training, food preparation and urban gardening, and urban ecological restoration projects within a model of youth leadership development to cultivate authentic youth Food Justice leadership. Through OFC’s educational Programs, youth become neighborhood leaders with knowledge about the local ecosystems, environmental issues, organic gardening, and healthy eating. We believe our approach is blazing a prolific path for our future youth participants to rise up as young adults who care deeply about living in a healthy a community.

We aim to inspire youth who live in Oakland’s most negatively impacted neighborhoods to make healthier decisions about the foods they put in their bodies and to be stewards of their environment through urban farming and food production. They, moreover, become advocates for resources for their families and fellow community members. Our participants reflect a growing number of leaders who are fighting for access to healthy food, education about proper nutrition, environmental stewardship through urban farming. What is innovative about our approach is that we are creating a community of youth leaders who are committed to working together to create a community-owned food system that involves residents, in every facet of  food production, to include the policy-making process.

Food Justice: Communities exercising their right to grow, sell and eat healthy food. Healthy food is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-appropriate and grown locally with consideration and deep care for the well-being of the land, workers and animals, critters and all creatures.

Whole Foods: unprocessed and unrefined, or processed and refined as little as possible. Typically do not contain added ingredients, such as sugar, salt, or fat.

Food System: whole range of food production and consumption, including the farming, food processing, food distribution, food marketing, food retailing, and consumption.

Sustainable Food System: a food system with a focus on local production and distribution. The idea that keeping products closer to where they are sold not only creates a relationship between farmers and consumers but also sustains local and regional communities. (source: http://www.faqs.org/nutrition/Smi-Z/Sustainable-Food-Systems.html)

Local Food System: collaborative effort to build more locally based, self-reliant food economies – one in which sustainable food production, processing, distribution and consumption is integrated to enhance the economic, environmental and social health of a particular place (source: Feenstra, G. (2002) Creating space for sustainable food systems: lessons from the field. Agriculture and Human Values. 19(2). 99-106.)

Value-added products: those commodities that gain additional value created at a particular stage of production. It refers to the contribution of the factors of production (ie: land, labor) that raise the value of the product as well as the incomes received by the owners of these factors. (Source)

Green Economy: a functioning economy that not only takes into consideration what is best for the community ecologically but also seeks to reform mainstream economics towards an unbiased understanding of economic facts and to make the political choices available to enhance the economic freedom available to all members of the community. (Source/Concept: Green Jobs)

Compost Teas: a liquid solution or suspension made by steeping compost in water. It is used as both a fertilizer and in attempts to prevent plant diseases