Dear Home City Development Community, In this uncertain time we are choosing to continue our newsletter series celebrating our residents’ stories as we all could use some good news. Please read about the great work our resident youth leaders have been up to over the last few months.
In the fall of 2019, Home City Development, Inc. (HCDI) youth leaders were busy tackling major issues around food security and food justice in urban environments. They engaged with the greater community and stepped up to the challenge to be teachers and leaders at NOFA’s Rootskills workshop in Providence RI, and to pacticipate in Rachel’s Table 2019 Foodraiser in Longmeadow, MA. Youth leaders are HCDI residents ages 15-21, who participate in programs in job and leadership training, often over the course of numerous spring and summer seasons.
Since 2017 Youth Leaders have been working and learning in HCDI’s Tapley Community Garden through programs funded by NOFA Mass and led by Sister Anna Muhammed. In November 2019, armed with their experience and knowledge from the Tapley Garden, they participated in and presented at NOFA’s 2019 Rootskills conference in Providence Rhode Island where over 300 people attended from all over the Northeast.
Brian Medina, an HCDI youth leader talked about his first experience as a facilitator at the Rootskills conference, “It was definitely scary…I thought I wouldn’t be able to facilitate a group like that, but once we actually started doing it, I started getting more comfortable…I gained confidence.”
Another youth leader, Kyanna Rios said, “I was really nervous but once we broke up into [smaller] groups, it was so much easier to talk to people, like…having a one-on-one conversation. Everything that we learned from our group and everything we learned from the different panels is something we can bring back to Home City.”
And Bernard Harvey described what it was like to share knowledge, “I was pretty excited because everybody got to hear my thoughts and what I experienced from our garden at Tapley. It was a good experience.”
HCDI youth also participated in Rachel’s Table’s Foodraiser 2019 at the Big Y in Lonmeadow. Foodraiser is a shopping challenge that teaches youth how to save money on healthy groceries in a fun, game-like environment, all for a good cause. They learned about nutrition, math, and home economics. Harvey described his experience, “We got to meet a lot of different people. Some from the same culture, some from a different culture, it felt like it was all one big community. They were really welcoming….It was definitely a new environment…but once you break out of the shell it was easy, you got to meet a lot of new people and it felt like a community, an open community.” HCDI youth were featured in a MassLive article on November 8th 2019.
In February 2020, youth leaders from HCDI, Gardening in the Community, Rachel’s Table, and gathered at HCDI’s Bay Street Resource Center to talk about food security and food justice, and how they can all work together more in the future.
