April 3-4, 2014
Focus: HOPE Conference Center, 1400 Oakman, Detroit, MI 48238
Workshop Tracks:
Register online, by mail or onsite. The registration fee is $20. Scholarships are available! No one will be turned away due to inability to pay the registration fee. To register visit www.detroitfoodpc.org/events/Annual-Summit
Hear about the plans for this year’s walk
and get all of the materials you need to make this year a success.
As with his past two books, renowned chef, author and food justice activist, Bryant Terry, will launch his new book, Afro-Vegan, at Calvin College’s Wake up Weekend. And, as he did in 2012, he will make a special presentation in community as a special guest of Our Kitchen Table. We will post the time and location when that information becomes available.
Terry’s last book, Vegan Soul Kitchen, is critically acclaimed. If you’ve attended OKT events, you most likely have seen a copy of it–or seen the recipe card reprints that Terry gave us permission to share with our constituents. He is also the host of Urban Organic, a multi-episode web series that he co-created.
Terry’s interest in cooking, farming and community health can be traced back to his childhood in Memphis, Tennessee, where his grandparents inspired him to grow, prepare, and appreciate good food. Bryant’s work has been featured in the New York Times, Food and Wine, Gourmet, Sunset, O: The Oprah Magazine, Essence, Yoga Journal, and Vegetarian Times among many other publications.
He has made dozens of national television and radio appearances, including being a guest on The Martha Stewart Show, Emeril Green, Tell Me More, Morning Edition, The Splendid Table, and The Tavis Smiley Show. As an exclusive speaker signed with the Lavin Agency, Bryant presents frequently around the country as a keynote speaker at conferences, community events, and and colleges, including Brown, Columbia, NYU, Smith, Stanford, and Yale.
Bryant completed the chef’s training program at the Natural Gourmet Institute for Health and Culinary Arts in New York City. He holds an M.A. in American History from NYU. From 2008 to 2010, Bryant was a fellow of the Food and Society Policy Fellows Program. He lives and creates in Oakland, California, with his wife Jidan Koon and their daughter.
Source: www.bryant-terry.com
Yes, snow still covers the ground, but OKT is thinking spring.
Recruiting Yard Gardeners! Have you ever wanted to grow a food garden but didn’t know where to start? Do you live within our four target neighborhoods (SECA. Baxter, Eastown or Garfield Park)? Are you pregnant or have children under age six? Do you have economic challenges or have health challenges you can address by growing your own food? OKT offers educational workshops, soil testing, gardening tools, starter food plants, garden coaches and compost—all at no cost to qualified gardeners! Drop us an email, oktable1@gmail.com, or give us a call, 616-206-3641.
Toni Scott (right) leading Sept. 2013 Cook, Eat & Talk
Saturday, March 8: Cook, Eat & Talk, 10 a.m. – 12 p.m., Sherman St. Church, 1000 Sherman St. SE. OKT Cooking Coach, Toni Scott, facilitates this cooking demo and dialogue about healthy foods in your neighborhood.
Catalyst Radio: Our Kitchen Table teaching gardening for food security
by Catalyst Radio (Catalyst Radio) on Friday Feb 28th, 2014 02:45pm in NEWS in collaboration with Linda Gellasch and WYCE Radio 88.1 FM
In this episode of Catalyst Radio we visit with Lisa Oliver King of the environmental justice and food security nonprofit Our Kitchen Table.
Beginning next week, Our Kitchen Table is kicking off a number of programs, including the March 8 Cook, Eat & Talk event, “How to Plan Your Food Garden” talk by biochemist Clinton Boyd on March 15, and an educational series centering on food politics.
Lisa Oliver King is also in studio to also tell us about the recent grant awarded for Our Kitchen Table’s food diversity project.
Friends of Grand Rapids Parks Urban Forest Project is partnering with the Kent and Montcalm Conservation Districts to present a workshop on growing, maintaining and pruning fruit trees. The event takes place 9 a.m. to noon, Saturday March 22 at Sietsema Orchards, 8540 2-Mile Road in Ada.
Although the setting for this event is a production fruit farm, the programming will target small-scale, urban and backyard fruit growers. Topics include selecting appropriate varieties, watering and fertilization, tree biology, insects and disease and tree pruning with an outdoor practical.
Space is limited. If you are interested in attending this class, RSVP to Lee Mueller at 616 389 4687 or lee.mueller@friendsofgrparks.org.
Growing Food in Urban Spaces, Edible Landscaping and Urban Garden Design Workshop
6 – 9 p.m. Tuesday March 11
Well House, 600 Cass SE, Grand Rapids
Designed for people in the city with limited space to grow, this workshop explores all the possible ways to grow food in an urban setting. Well House staff will work with each participant to design a growing plan for their space.Participants need to bring either a drawing or digital images of the area(s) in which they are growing.
This workshop is limited to 15 people. To register, contact Well House at contact@wellhousegr.org. The cost is $20, which helps to fund the Well House food growing program. However, people with a limited income will not be turned away.
Touring OKT in-yard food gardens. Photo courtesy W K Kellogg Foundation.
The W.K. Kellogg Foundation has committed $300,000 to funding the Our Kitchen Table (OKT) Food Diversity Project for another three years. In 2010, the foundation granted the Grand Rapids grass-roots environmental justice organization $360,000 funding for an initial three-year period. The goal of the funded program is to strengthen the capacity of Grand Rapids’ southeast neighborhood residents to address food and environmental health disparities impacting vulnerable children and families. “We are so pleased that the Kellogg Foundation has chosen to continue funding OKT’s efforts on the Food Diversity Project. Hunger is a huge issue—but under-nutrition impacts even more of our neighbors, especially children,” says Lisa Oliver-King, executive director. “Our project reinvents the term “affordable food” to mean nutritious, fresh, health-sustaining food.”
OKT has been addressing these issues since 2003. Focused on creating an alternative healthy food system within the Eastown, Baxter, SECA/Southtown and Garfield Park neighborhoods, The Food Diversity Program includes a yard gardening program, the Southeast Area Farmers’ Market and advocacy for just food and environmental policies. The renewed grant will continue and expand this work.
Yard Gardens: OKT plans on growing an estimated 5,500 organic starter food plants in the new hoop house it is building with Well House. In 2011 and 2012, Molesta Floral allowed OKT space in its empty greenhouses. In 2013, it grew in the Blandford Farm greenhouse. OKT provides its gardeners with containers, organic soil, soil testing, gardening education, garden coaches and monthly events on foraging, preparing and preserving nutritious foods. In 2013, 17 yard gardeners each harvested an estimated 65 to 85 pounds of food.
Southeast Area Farmers’ Market: Since 2011, OKT has managed the market in two locations: Gerald R Ford Academic Center and Garfield Park. Though small, it offers a wide variety of locally grown, chemical- free produce, cottage kitchen goods and other items. In 2012, more than 1,100 residents visited the market resulting in more than $8,000 in sales—89% of sales were from food subsidy programs (SNAP, Double Up Food Bucks et al.).
Policy: OKT addresses policy issues through its website, OKTJustice.org, presentations at events and two, five-week educational series: Food Politics and the Food Justice Movement and The History of Food.
Please join us!
If you are a friend of OKT, you have seen the popular Beet the System artwork on our website and in our handouts. Radical artists, Breakfast and Jess, created this image in 2000 and printed thousands of stickers to share with the food justice community at no cost.
They are now in the process of reprinting this and several other original food justice images, enough to last ten years (they hope). If you can, please support them in this effort by contributing through their Kickstarter campaign, which runs through tomorrow. They say, “We have made and distributed thousands and thousands of these stickers since 2000. We want to make more and distribute them as always….for FREE. So far they have been included in catalogs, sent to street artists all over the world and packed in produce boxes … People always ask us for more and we would love to continue distributing them, of course, for free.”
Support the Beet the System Kickstarter Campaign Here.
More food justice art by Breakfast and Jess
Our Kitchen Table 