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Youth Take on Local Food Systems

We’re more than 3 years into our Youth in Food Systems program, and more than 7 years since we began programming centred around young people. What began as a small number of school garden grants in Waterloo Region has grown and evolved into a provincial program of several ever evolving, youth-driven projects directly engaging more than 100 youth as leaders each year.

Our online projects include the Peer-Led Food Media Creation (blog, social media, learning modules) and the Food Leader Interview Series. Meanwhile, our local work in Waterloo Region is centred around the Youth Food Market, a series of youth-led pop-up produce stalls that aims to support local food systems and food accessibility while providing skill building and leadership opportunities to youth.

Adjacent to the Market project is a Garden Workshop Series designed for youth and centred around important, practical food production and literacy learning. The idea is that workshops facilitated by local food leaders enable mentorship opportunities and deepen peer-peer and adult-youth relationships within the community. Topics this season include food preservation skills, garden design and build, soil health, seed saving, and more.

This year, for the first time, we extended the Market Leader season (we call the youth who plan and run the markets “Market Leaders”) with monthly in-person field trips and virtual sessions.

Seed Party on January 19 at Communitech, in partnership with SWRIL’s Nurture project. Youth and adult allies came together for an evening of locally made food, germination testing, seed cleaning and packing, and sharing stories about seeds of all kinds.

Trip to Wooden Boat on February 19. Eight Market Leaders attended to learn about local seasonal produce from Chef Tran, and participate in a cooking class.

Trip to the Seeds of Diversity office with Public Health on March 15. Market Leaders learned about the social determinants of health, mapped out locations/initiatives of interest related to the Market, and brainstormed what a “successful” Market season would look like.

Kitchener Market field trip on July 5. The group headed to the Kitchener Market to explore through a scavenger hunt, gathering inspiration for their summer market days. Along the way, they picked up some lunch from local vendors before taking the ION to Waterloo Park for a market practice session.

These field trips allowed for food literacy learning and hands-on skill building, as well as time for relationship building between youth and with adult allies. They add a sense of belongingness for the Market Leaders, increasing commitment to the work and adding an extra layer of excitement for what’s to come.

Then, the real fun began! Our workshops are in full swing, and the Markets are a flurry of fun. We’ll let our Market Leaders elaborate on what the Market has looked and felt like this year:

(The following excerpts are taken from a blog post written by Market Leaders Nihal Mir and Benson Yu in July-August 2024)

[..] Our produce is grown at four farms in the Kitchener-Waterloo Region and seven local school garden sites. Because our sources of produce are almost entirely local, we are able to support other charitable organizations within our community, create a more sustainable food market, and guarantee freshness in our items for our customers.

Something that we value highly in our markets is affordability, as one of our goals is to make our produce accessible to as many people in our community as possible. One way we make our markets accessible is by giving our customers the opportunity to decide how much they want to pay for each item within a price range. For example, our cucumbers are priced from $0.50 - $2.50!

Through these markets, we get to connect with like-minded individuals who care about positively contributing to the community, and we are able to develop transferable skills such as interpersonal communication, customer service, salesmanship, problem-solving, and collaboration in a realistic and unique setting.”

Read the entire blog post from Nihal and Benson on the YFS Blog!

Our local food work with youth is made possible by the support of many others, in the form of charitable donations, project partnerships, space for our pop-up markets and workshops, supplies, materials, and produce. We thank each and every one of our supporters for helping this work come to life!