Do you love food? Would you like to get involved with a group that could help you to further your passion for urban farming, culinary arts, and everything food?
I recently had the pleasure of talking to Katie Husted, who is spearheading a new program for youth ages 13-18: The Hillhurst Sunnyside Youth Food Council. This program aims to not only get youth involved, but to allow them to learn about, work with and and explore… you guessed it, food! This program has great potential to become a real success in the community and I strongly suggest that you check it out if you’re looking for an exciting extracurricular opportunity. Here’s what Katie had to say…
Q: So, first things first; what’s the program about?
A: Well, the program, it’s brand new. We’ve never run anything like this before. In the past, I’ve been doing kids’ programming with 4-7 year olds. There’s an out-of-school care program run by the community association where I work, and so we’ve partnered with them. But one of the objectives of the kids’ program was to incorporate some activism into what we were getting the kids to do and we just found that it was just a little bit too tricky to meet that objective with kids that age. We thought it might be interesting to try working with some older kids, so that’s why we’ve shifted and the program is for 13-18 year olds and it’s all about food, which I know is a vast topic, but that’s kind of the point of it. I’d like there to be some gardening involved, cooking and like I said, food advocacy. The idea is that we’d meet once a week as a group and learn about some food related issue, whether it be something like urban farming or the local food movement. And when I say learn about, I imagine that we could do fun things like go visit an urban farm together or even have a farmer come visit us and talk about what they’re doing. We could get involved with the Farmer’s Market that happens every weekend at the HSCA (Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Association), things like that, and then turn what we’ve learned as a group into some kind of public project. For example, if there are some painters in the group, we could maybe paint a mural in the neighbourhood or if there are members interested in film or photography we could film the progress of a garden that we grow over the summer and turn it into a video. Things like that.
Q: Where would the group meetings and programming take place?
A: We would meet at the Hillhurst Sunnyside Community Association and that’s between 10th and 14th St, just up from Kensington on 5th Ave. NW, right by Riley Park.
Q: Because it is the Hillhurst Sunnyside Youth Food Council, would people living outside of the area still be eligible to join?
A: Yes, the Community Association does have to first cater to members of the community, but it’s not exclusive at all.
Q: Are there any other specific programs that you’d like to run as sort of “satellites” of the program, like cooking classes and things like that? And by that I mean have the HSYFC as sort of the central focus but have some subcommittees, if you will?
A: Yes, it’s definitely a possibility. Because this is such a new program and we’ve never run it before, a lot is up in the air and I’d like it to be very much led by the youth involved. I’d like them to have the freedom to run with their interests. If that means forming subcommittees to work on different projects, that could definitely happen. We could have a gardening committee, a cooking committee, a research committee and then collaborate.
Q: At this point, how much interest has been shown in the program? I don’t know how much outreach you’ve done up until now, so I’m interested to know how it’s coming so far.
A: I have been promoting it. I haven’t gotten anyone applying yet, but I’ve been doing some presentations at Queen Elizabeth High School, distributing posters and promoting through our social media and through the networks that the community association has, so I’ve been getting a lot of good feedback from people that I’m talking to about it, but as of yet, I have no applicants. I’m not sure if that’s because I’m not effectively communicating the program to them or if it’s just something that only a small group would be interested in. I’m still working on finding my group, so that’s why I’m sure that Youth Are Awesome can help out!
Q: What would you say to anyone who is considering joining?
A: I would say that there’s huge potential in this program for them to explore their own interests and make it what they want it to be, which I think for this age group is really important. I think come teenage years, kids don’t really want to be restrained and really want to be given a lot of freedom to make something into what they want it to be. For their own sake, I think it’s important to give them creative control. We all eat, right, so I want this group to have the freedom to approach food and food issues in the way that makes it meaningful and interesting to them.
Q: Finally, just a general question; at this point, do you have a day of the week picked out for meetings?
A: We do. I have Tuesdays at 4:00 PM picked out, which means that kids can come directly from school to the community association. Meetings will last anywhere from 1-2 hours, I’m expecting. I’m not going to put a firm time frame on it because the meetings will happen as they do.
So there you have it! If you have any further questions regarding the program or if you’d like to join, feel free to check out the info page or to contact Katie directly at katie@hillhurstsunnyside.org or at 403 283-0554 ext. 247.