Back in November, Jamie Smith Hopkins wrote for the Baltimore Sun about a group called Gather Baltimore, which “collects donations of food from farmers markets and schools and delivers them to organizations in the city for distribution to those in need.”
Hopkins says, “Gather Baltimore, the fledging group that organized the rapid harvest, does this work every week — collecting food that would otherwise go to waste and distributing it in city neighborhoods.”
“Arthur Gray Morgan, a teacher and urban farmer who founded Gather Baltimore, is a newly minted fellow with the Open Society Institute-Baltimore. His fellowship mission for the next 18 months: expand Gather Baltimore and make it sustainable. …”Morgan, who tends the Hamilton Crop Circle gardens in Northeast Baltimore, has collected and distributed free food for several years — ever since he saw how much went to waste at farmers’ markets. What couldn’t be sold wasn’t necessarily taken back to the farm. Frequently, it was tossed out.
“That bothered Morgan, who hears a frequent refrain from his students at Hamilton Elementary/Middle: ‘I’m hungry, I’m hungry.’ …
“Now he and his army of volunteers have the work down to a science — harvesting, picking up donations from local stores and stopping off at the downtown farmers’ market to cart off anything farmers want to contribute after the customers leave.”
You can help Gather Baltimore by voting for it at reddit, here.
Like most Americans, I don’t know much about the multibillion-dollar Farm Bill, which is up for renewal this year. NYU professor Marion Nestle talks about its enormous complexity in the Boston Globe.
“I’d like to bring agricultural policy in line with health policy. Health policy tells us that we ought to be making fruits and vegetables inexpensive.” Her biggest concern is that those who produce and sell processed foods benefit most from current policy, which has had the effect of lowering prices for processed food and increasing the prices for the fresh fruits and vegetables people really need.
I have blogged before about the related problem of “food deserts,” localities where there is no reasonably priced market and people end up eating too much junk food. (Check out this post and this one.)
“Increasingly, metropolitan areas are creating or bolstering their food policies, recognizing the need to ensure that healthful and affordable foodstuffs are available for residents. Baltimore fashioned a food policy initiative in 2009 which involves multiple city departments and an advisory group of over 30 organizations. Priorities included the reduction of ‘food deserts’ and the support of projects that allow low-income residents to order groceries online and pick them up at the local library. New York and San Francisco have also created their own food policy initiatives, and mayors across the U.S. have met to launch a food policy task force.”
“In the summer, Shirley and Ewald August grow blueberries at their Windsor Mill, Md., farm and sell at Baltimore farmers markets.” Photograph: Amy Davis/MCT/Landov
I went to a conference today on how industry and higher-education entities can collaborate better to prepare students for the jobs that companies want to fill. There was a big crowd, and among the speakers were U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island and Connecticut Governor Dannel Malloy.
I was especially pleased to hear panel member Gerald Chertavian and catch up with what his nonprofit has accomplished in the past few years.
Starting in college, Chertavian volunteered as a Big Brother, and the experience had a profound effect on him. After he went to Harvard Business School, launched a company, and sold it, he decided to invest in helping motivated youths aged 18-24 who lacked the money, networks, or opportunity to get a good education or decent job.
So he founded Year Up. He built on his list of corporate contacts to make internships a key part of a training program that ended in jobs.
Interested young people had to have a high school diploma or GED and demonstrate through the application process (which involves getting references) that they are serious. They earn a stipend during a year of training in either financial-industry or tech skills. They learn workplace behavior and business communication. At the same time they get college credits at an affiliated school, which most students decide to put toward a degree after their year in the program. Companies have found the Year Up youths invaluable, and some are changing their HR requirements to allow in more people without a bachelor’s already in hand.
At the conference, Chertavian acknowledged that in spite of having helped 5,000 students over a decade through Year Up programs around the country, the organization was not big enough to achieve its ambition of a major impact on the opportunity divide. To scale up, he said, Year Up is partnering first with a college in Baltimore that will use the approach. It hopes to keep expanding the new model after Baltimore.
There are a lot of great You Tube videos that might interest you — some about the Year Up program, some about Chertavian, some about the students. Here is one.
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