Comida Con Causa - Spring 2018
Student-produced Semester Highlights
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"How might we combat inequities in the food system?"
"Why do impoverished communities historically inhabit rich lands?" This immersive Humanities-Spanish project explored social justice and food equity, as students designed and built planter boxes for the local community, driving social change. Students collaborated with local food justice organizations to propose solutions to the inequities of the food system. The results of their research and interviews were represented by laser-cut food justice plaques attached to the planter boxes. Our exhibition was a community cooking night with interactive cooking demonstrations. Students created authentic cuisine and discussed the historical exploitation of the people and resources of Latin-America, drawing from academic research and interviews with local Latin-American chefs. |
Students conducted academic and online research to craft a paper responding to our essential question, 'Why do poor people historically inhabit rich lands?'
Students investigated inequities and injustices present in their chosen Latin-American country. After a series of critiques and revisions, students wrote a paper and presented their findings at exhibition. |
Student designed and built planter boxes and composters for a local community center. Our donated products helped transform an empty lot into a community hub.
Students worked with Google SketchUp to draw 3D designs, learned how to use power tools safely, then worked in groups to build beautiful planters. |
In order to connect their food justice research and interviews with their planter boxes, students designed food justice plaques.
These plaques highlighted inequities in the food system and included interview quotes and solutions. |
Comida Con Causa in the News
Student Reflections
The higher purpose of the project for me was to really know the importance of community. Community is much more than just a group of people, animals, organisms, etc. Communities make up our world and they highlight important values. Creating an amazing environment full of great vibes is the vision of what we did at our exhibition. At Fair@44, the community of City Heights gathered and connected during an amazing day of possibilities and hope for a better future. We partnered with Dojo Cafe and displayed a lot of our learning throughout the semester, whether it was creating planter boxes and informational plaques for our City Heights business and food waste organizations. Our class learned the truth behind the food industry and the importance and impact of local food businesses. This whole project definitely gave me an amazing learning experience.
Comida Con Causa definitely had a lot of challenging situations. For example, during the process of building the planter box, we designed a terrace on which to grow vines. When we started to drill together the parts of the terrace, the wood kept cracking or it snapped into pieces. So we asked our teacher, Matt, to determine what to do because we'd restarted multiple times. He asked us if we'd pre-drilled the holes for the terrace so it could be attached. We did not do that and after Matt said that, we got right back to work. Our group worked relentlessly to catch up because the exhibition was in a few days. We made sure to pre-drill holes, so that we wouldn't repeat the same mistakes. We definitely didn't give up when situations got tough because we knew that if we settled for work that's not our best, we wouldn't be satisfied and we were going to represent many people. To make a quality product, you really have to listen, follow your planning principles and be precise about any work to reduce mistakes. Going forward, obstacles will be in your way and it's really how you tackle those situations to bounce back from your mistakes. This experience was memorable and this semester was one to cherish. - Senan This project was very eye opening. We had the opportunity to gain perspective about the world, specifically Latin America. We investigated two main questions. Firstly, “How might we combat inequities in the food system?’ and secondly, “Why do poor people historically inhabit rich lands?” There were two parts of the project. The first was to look at food inequities in America. Each group chose a topic of interest, mine being the food security of US inmates. From here we choose an organization related to our food inequity, in our case Kitchens For Good. From there we designed and built planter boxes, inspired by interviews with local restaurants and food justice organizations. The second part was to research a Latin-American country of our choice. We interviewed someone from that country, and obtained a recipe from them, then wrote a research paper on the same country, exploring the historical exploitations of its people and resources.
Throughout this entire project I learned a lot. I developed my research and writing skills. I improved my ability to analyze texts, and became more adept at using power tools. We also had many assignments that were separate from the project to further our knowledge, such as our debates and seminars as well as our Democracy Now discussions. Personally, I really enjoyed the combination of project and non-project related assignments. It was cool to get to learn new things that weren't directly related, so that we had the opportunity to get more out of the semester. I also really enjoyed making the planter boxes, and having creative freedom. It was a new way to express myself, as well as spread the word about an important inequity that doesn't normally get light shined upon. I feel like some of the most challenging aspects of the semester was balancing the workload. Sometimes we had to juggle three assignments for one class, which was new and hard. As annoying as it could be sometimes, I knew that is was necessary to gain these skills. I want to go to college, therefore, being able to balance all my school work with extracurricular activities is going to be necessary. I think that another thing that I struggled with sometimes was my motivation. There were times when I was just so overwhelmed with everything that I had to do, that I would break down. But I didn't let these challenges stop me. I changed my mindset and tried to see it as a growing/learning opportunity, rather then just something I struggled with. I was able to overcome this by trying to make sure I knew everything I needed to do and not procrastinate. Even when things don't seem that important, there is always at least one little thing that can help me get to where I want to be. - Hannah The Comida con Causa project was a very eye opening project. The project pushed us to dig deeper into our food and the process behind it. It also encouraged us to look into other countries that have worse conditions and that are suffering without basic necessities. As we worked through the project, I learned many things. A finding that I learned was that 1 in 6 people in San Diego are food insecure. To see that people were suffering right under our noses was very sad and it made me want to spread awareness on all of this. I enjoyed that we got to work with City Heights businesses, to improve the community and to spread awareness of the food system. We designed our planter box to represent how much food what different incomes can buy. We also made our plaque full of ways people can help and what the statistics were for food insecurity. Ove all the project was a huge success and I had a lot of fun, learning new things about our community and what I can do to help improve it. - Lindsey
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Comida Con Causa was an extremely challenging yet intriguing project for me that allowed me to not expand my world view but also become a better version of myself. There were three major components to the project: creating a planter box for an underserved community within San Diego, writing a research paper about a Latin American Country, and performing a cooking demonstration in Spanish.
Over the course of this semester, I came to understand power and corruption and the role it plays in Latin America. This is evident in my research paper about the ruthless dictator of Chile, Augusto Pinochet. He is a prime example of how chaos ensues when an individual is granted too much power. But what I learned is not limited to Chile or politics. This semester, I think I also realized how educating yourself can often lead to educating your community, thus creating change! Our planter box is an exemplary model of this. Before building the planter box, I familiarized myself with the City Heights community and the site, and also with the issue of food waste in America. I used the information I had gathered to produce the best possible work for the City Heights community and also raised awareness about an important problem within the United States. It was very rewarding to know that all the researching and planning lead up to something beautiful that serves a local community. Overall, this project was very impactful not only on an individual level but also on a level much bigger than myself. - Katelynn Comida Con Causa was an exploration of history, food, and culture. We deepened our understanding of ourselves and our world, examining systemic injustices along the way. The first part of the project saw us making Spanish video tutorials for a family recipe. I learned things I never knew about my family history when I interviewed my ninety-seven-year-old grandmother and began to truly appreciate how amazing she is. When we moved on to interviewing immigrants from Latin America, Evelyn Dominguez’s stories about growing up in Guatemala both increased my desire to travel (and eat…) and my appreciation for living in the United States. Our free election to coup ratio is considerably higher. Guatemala has had a difficult past and the hard times continue today.
When we journeyed further into our target country’s history by writing research papers, I explored the effects of American Imperialism on Guatemala’s economy. Our interview with Evelyn showed me how lucky I am to grow up in this country, but my research showed me how ugly the United States’ past really is. I’m glad I learned about the exploitation of Latin America, though, because I don’t want to be ignorant of how we come by the luxuries we enjoy. The other major part of Comida Con Causa was about injustices in the American food system. After studying a myriad of issues and interviewing nonprofits dedicated to combating those issues, we set about building planter boxes to be installed at an empty lot turned community space in the inner city. We hope the food we grew will help combat food insecurity in the area. My group attended a meeting of the San Diego Food System Alliance, a cohort of organizations working to prevent food waste, which reassured me that there are people out there fighting injustice. I enjoyed learning about the horrors of exploitation, food waste, and hunger because I want to be informed, but when it came to the building aspect I was more than a little reluctant. My strengths are reading, writing, and memorizing; I have never been attracted to building. When the time came to begin the build, however, I forced myself to go in with an open mind and a willing attitude. I ended up having a really good time. Once I got the hang of drills and saws, I felt pretty badass. Unfortunately, the build itself didn’t exactly go smoothly, as the hexagonal shape of our planter box was particularly challenging to construct and we were forced to take it apart midway through to trim the wood. We could have avoided this if my partners and I had been more accurate with our cuts at the beginning of the build. I struggled with collaboration with this group outside of the build. To immortalize our findings from our food justice research, each group created a plaque to display on their planter box that detailed the issue they had investigated and what we can do as individuals to combat it. I took on this part of the planter box by myself because I had the most experience with Adobe Illustrator, the program we used to create the plaques. I wish I would have worked with my partners; it would have given them more experience using Illustrator and our final product would have been better if it was a culmination of three different ideas instead of mine alone. Comida Con Causa opened my eyes to a lot of the bad things in this world. I learned about impoverished people forced to search for food in garbage dumps in Venezuela. I learned that 1 in 6 people in my city don’t know where their next meal is coming from. But this project also opened my eyes to a lot of good. My group prepared delicious Guatemalan tostadas for strangers, friends, and family; sharing food brought our community together. I learned that my grandmother can recite entire poems from memory. I learned that even though there is a lot of injustice in this world, there are people fighting the good fight. There is hope. - Kyna |
Produce Good Gleaning Event
Our team spent the day gleaning with Produce Good, a local food activist organization. Students picked 1500lbs of unwanted fruit and donated it the Feeding San Diego.
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Global School Playday
We spent the day with Compassion It, PlayWell Teknologies, and Breakthrough Play, developing our empathy, connecting through improv, and better understanding global inequities by playing with Legos!
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Exhibition
Our exhibition was held at the Fair@44 site in City Heights. We donated our planter boxes to this site in order to help create a community hub as well as provide access to food for residents and inform them about inequities in the food system. Students proudly presented their planter boxes and food justice plaques and also performed live cooking demos with guests, in Spanish. These demos were a culmination of interviews with local chefs, originally from Latin America, from whom they received recipes for authentic cuisine. Students cooked with family members, residents, and interviewees, while also discussing the historical exploitation of the people and resources of their chosen Latin-American country.