WE LOOK FORWARD TO MEETING OUR NEW YOUTH CORPS AS WE JOURNEY THROUGH THIS MARKET SEASON TOGETHER.  

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As a part of the Hattie Carthan Garden Youth Corps you can develop job skills in gardening, seasonal nutrition, food education, livestock management, composting, environmental stewardship and healthy living. Over the course of a season on the Farm from April to November, you will have the opportunity to gain a strong foundation of agricultural skills and to investigate critical issues affecting your community. 

You will learn to educate, through participation in special events in the market and build community organizing and advocacy skills. We encourage our youths to return for additional seasons to receive leadership training and guide first year participants through the basics.  

 

After a learning intensive training series, the farm stands provide a hands-on experience to youth in the mechanics of owning and operating a community venture, based on the premise that experience really is the best teacher.  All youth interns work in the Hattie Carthan Community Farmers Market upon completing Garden to Market training and will assist in garden maintenance, livestock care, planting, harvesting and packaging of vegetables from the Hattie Carthan Community Garden (adjacent to the Market).   Throughout the season, youth help support market programs and continue to participate in supplemental hands-on trainings and activities on the farm and in the Market.
 

Youth Market Training

 

The Hattie Carthan After Church market is conducting a 2-day youth food educator intensive training for youths.  Our youth training teaches community youths how to facilitate workshops about local and seasonal eating and cooking; basic nutrition; fruit and vegetable identification, food origins, recipe creation, knife skills, food storage and preparation.

 

Upon completion of the two day intensive training and several mandatory food preparation workshops in the market youth food educators conduct cooking demonstration workshops at the Hattie Carthan community market on Saturdays and at the Hattie Carthan After Church market on Sundays from September to November. The youths will inspire and empower other youths and their families to create delicious healthy meals and will occasionally provide cooking demonstrations at youth clubs, in their schools, churches and at community events.

 

Why Herbalism for Youths?

 

Youths who work with herbs develop an appreciation for healthy foods and to develop a deeper sense of place. The lives of herbal plants are inextricably intertwined with ours: blooming uninvited outside the front door and at the wild edges of asphalt parking lots, growing from the terra cotta pots on our kitchen windowsills and rooting in well-tended community gardens. Hattie Carthan 2nd year youth interns will learn about these sources of healing closest to home and study the hardy and plentiful plants in energetic relationship with the land that houses, feeds, affects and influences us.  Youths learn about herb species that can help urban dwellers most in our quest to create healthy bodies and environments, often growing in close proximity without our having realized its potential. 

 

Once we have identified and built a relationship with our fellow locals/natives, we will come to understand the plants’ needs as well as our own, recognize when their kind is doing well and when they are being overharvested or otherwise suffering decline.  Youths gain familiarity with herbs that thrive in the city , learn to utilize herbs in cooking and other applications, learn about conscious harvesting, basic medicine making, develop reciprocal relationship  with the wondrous “weeds” that co-inhabit our cities and receive tools for exploring and deepening sense of place, the essential sense of belonging that literally grounds us and our work in the real, living, present world. 

 

 

Herbalism helps youths with

• Asthma

• Broken Bones

• Cancer

• Colds & Flu’s

• Emotional issues and more

• Eczema

• Obesity

 

 

Herbalism works in the following areas:

 

Body: Herbs are good for all kinds of illnesses; chronic asthma, allergies, acute-colds, and ear infections. Works well with measles, mumps and other childhood illnesses against which some parents may choose not to immunize.

Mind: Herbs work very well for children with brain dysfunction and similar problems.

Emotions: Herbs work well for depression, anxiety, releasing trauma etc.

Social: Herbs can create social cohesion and is used for grounding in home and social environments

Spirit: Children live much closer to their spiritual selves. Even very low doses of the correct herb can be very effective.

Soil enhancement: Herbs can provide recycled minerals and nutrients to depleted soil, restore environmental traumas and remediate trace minerals while bringing health to the living soil

 

Youth Herbalism and Food Educator Training

 

As a part of the Hattie Carthan Garden Youth Corps participants can develop job skills in gardening, seasonal nutrition, food education, livestock management, composting, environmental stewardship and healthy living. Over the course of a season on the Farm, youths will have the opportunity to gain a strong foundation of agricultural skills and to investigate critical issues affecting their community. Youths will learn to educate, through participation in special events in the market and build community organizing and advocacy skills. We encourage our youths to return for additional seasons to receive leadership training and guide first year participants through the basics.  

 

After a learning intensive training series, the farm stands provide a hands-on experience to youth in the mechanics of owning and operating a community venture, based on the premise that experience really is the best teacher.  All youth interns work in the Hattie Carthan Community Farmers Market upon completing Garden to Market training and will assist in garden maintenance, livestock care, planting, harvesting and packaging of vegetables from the Hattie Carthan Community Garden (adjacent to the Market).   Throughout the season, youth help support market programs and continue to participate in supplemental hands-on trainings and activities on the farm and in the Market.

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Declaration Youth Bill of Rights

Rooted in Community Leadership Summit Philadelphia, PA

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1. We demand respect for Mother Earth, for the Food Justice and Food Sovereignty culture, and for the indigenous cultures that are working to establish their own autonomous food systems.  All must respect and protect the land that grows our food.

2. We demand an end to the mistreatment of workers, farmers, animals, and the environment, that is caused by our current food system.

3. We demand government funding for more nutrition education, and awareness in our communities, and for all communities.  Education on things such as, but not limited to, health, seasonal produce, and diet related diseases, farming, organic, sustainability, alternative methods of farming and any and all subjects that those communities demand.  People have the right to know what’s in their food, and to decide what to eat. We promote educating parents on nutrition and healthy lifestyles. Schools in our communities and all over the world must establish and be leaders with the tools and education that promote a healthy lifestyle. We recommend that schools recognize youth lead fitness programs as tools for success.  

4. We the youth demand more healthy food choices in our schools, and in schools all over the world.  We want vending machines out of schools unless they have healthy choices.  We need healthier school lunches that are implemented by schools with the ingredients decided on by the Youth. We demand composting in schools and in our neighborhoods.

5. We the youth call for the termination of any and all genetically modified seeds, plants, and produce.  We want a policy from the governments all over the world that ends

6. GMO’s, no exceptions.

7. We the youth absolutely don’t want any chemicals or pesticides in our food!

8. We the Youth demand a ban on High Fructose Corn Syrup and other additives, and preservatives that are a detriment to our and our communities’ health.  This must be implemented by our government, and governments around the world.

9. We demand food that is grown within a 100-mile radius of our homes. We don’t want food traveling thousands of miles using up fossil fuels to get to our homes.

10. We the youth demand that everyone working in the food system must be treated with respect, treated fairly, and earn at the minimum, a just living wage. For all those that are working in the food system we demand a model like the Domestic Fair Trade Association to be implemented.

11. We demand the implementation of regulations from all governments and peoples on a global scale that prevent corporations from globalizing our food systems and our world as we recognize this as seriously costly to global and local human health.  

12. We demand an end to the subsidy of cash crops, including corn and soy beans.  Rather than our tax dollars going to subsidies for industrial farming, we demand financial support for small organic farmers.

13. We want a restructuring of the process of being certified organic and fair trade.  This must come from the people, and from grassroots movements across the world.

14. We the youth demand that a policy be enacted allowing for unused land to be made available for communities to farm and garden organically and sustainably.

15. We believe farmers and all people should have the freedom to save their seed.  Any law that prevents this should be reversed; no law shall ever be made to prevent seed saving.

16. We demand an end to industrial farming, which accounts for one-third of the greenhouse gas emissions in the world. Tighter regulation and steps must be made that will decrease the amount of emissions every year.

17. We demand more farmers’ markets instead of super markets.  The number of farmer’s markets must be increased every year until there are more farmers’ markets than super markets.

18. We demand the continuation and respect of all cultural history and significance of food and agriculture.  We must work to restore, remember, and regain our food culture, practices, and traditions in farming.

19. We want healthy options in corner stores while empowering the community to make better food choices.  We demand more jobs for youth to work with our communities to make this happen and help them control their food systems.

20. We demand school assemblies to recruit more youth to promote food justice. The continuation of the movement for Food Justice, Food Sovereignty and cultivation of future Youth leaders is necessary for feeding our youth, our nation and our world.

 

This is only the beginning step in many to come to make our visions, our dreams, and this bill a reality.  This is only the start of our movement. From: http://www.youthfoodbillofrights.com/