November 7 Community Meeting: Diversity in the Food Industry

Hey Folks,

Come out and join us this Monday November 7th for our next community meeting. This month’s meeting with feature three guest speakers on diversity and food security. Also, because you asked us, our November meeting will be a chance for you to learn about how you can get involved in each of our exciting TYFPC committees such as social media, the journal, events, research and policy, and more! Come one and come all, youth or those feeling youthful, and invite your friends to come too.

Details:

Metro Hall, 55 John St., Room 308, 6pm-8pm. RSVP here

Bios of our Guest Speakers

1. Mwanajuma Extavour – CYL Program Manager

Afri-Can FoodBasket’s Cultivating Youth Leadership Program (CYL)

Since 2007, the Cultivating Youth Leadership Program has provided over 100 youth with employment, training and African centred leadership development opportunities. The program outreaches to African descendant youth ages 16-25. Throughout Spring training and the Summer growing season, CYL prepares and nurtures youth using land as a vehicle to develop healthy individuals for healthy communities. The CYL Program is an opportunity for youth to learn about organic food, the food production system, the natural environment and community development, with hands-on practical urban farm/garden work and civic engagement activities. CYL’s program activities also include vegan cooking and nutrition sessions, employability skills training, food vending at community markets, creative arts, field trips, and activism in food justice. Food is grown via AFB’s Ujamaa Farmers’ Collective (McVean Farm in Brampton ON and and Black Creek farm in Toronto), as well as at various community and back-yard garden sites. These activities seek to familiarize youth with their food, culture, farm/garden, and greater natural environment. Most of all the CYL Program is a way to discover and attain for higher knowledge of self as Diasporic Africans, and our ancestral connection to food. For more information please contact afb.cyl@gmail.com or call 416-248-5639.

2. Xuan-Yen Cao
3+ Years as Garden and Food Educator at Green Thumbs Growing Kids

Over the past five years Xuan-Yen has been involved or worked with numerous community food projects and youth organizations with groups such as the Toronto Community Garden Network, Dig In, U4Change, Greenest City, Growing Together, and the Growing Food and Justice for All Initiative just to name a few. She speaks fluent French and has a working knowledge of Vietnamese. When not getting her hands dirty with soil, cooking, writing, or riding her bicycle, she spends her spare time getting her hands and clothes covered in grease learning to fix bikes.

3. Vanessa Ling Yu

Co-Chair of the Bathurst-Finch Network’s Food Action Team (BFN-FAT)

Vanessa grew up in a Chinese restaurant in a rural area of Nova Scotia. Her life experiences allow her to connect sometimes seemingly disparate interests and activities in ethnic studies, racial justice, and all-things food.

After completing a double honours Bachelor of Arts at York University in Health & Society and Sociology, she pursued her passion for health-oriented solutions. She then earned a Masters of Health Science in Health Promotion at University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health. Vanessa’s interests in categories of race and ethnicity brought her to disciplinary studies at University of Chicago, where she completed a Masters of Arts in Social Sciences. Her 4-month ethnographic study in Chicago’s Chinatown links macro-policies and micro-interactions around processes of racialization and ethnicization in the production and consumption of “authentic Chinese food”.

Got a question for one (or all) of them? Bring it to the meeting and start a discussion. See you(th) there

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