Sprouting Food Justice: through youth empowerment | Pratt Institute School of Design

ARTICULTURE is a youth-led organization that connects youth from local food education programs with future employers and youth alike across New York City. ARTICULTURE connects the small islands of resistance by providing an accessible platform for youth empowerment to expand their private and professional networks and to fight for food justice in their local communities. As the organization grows – through word of mouth – the youth will act as local food ambassadors within their communities advocating for their right to nutritious – and culturally appropriate food. The outcome on a long-term basis is to combat food injustice by dismantling the oppressive structures that misguide our food system in local underserved neighborhoods in New York City and empowering youth to be the agents of change.

AAA | Amplifying Alumni Ambassadors

A future co-creation workshop I facilitated with youth from East New York Farms and Insurgo. They came up with ARTICULTURE a youth-led organization that connects youth across NYC. The organization cultivates a powerful network to help youth excel their careers and to secure food justice for high-need communities in NYC. A poster, manifesto, and music visualizer were created based on the insights collected from the workshop.

Montage: Sprouting Food Justice

A montage I created together with youth and staff from East New York Farms to highlight the issue around food injustice and to encourage others to join the food justice movement.

Systems Map: Living with Food Injustice

To understand and decide where to intervene in a complex system in constant change I designed a conceptual map of the elements that influence and shape this system. It becomes evident that the local actions are a way out of the vicious cycle. The arrows describe the relationships between the larger system components of the wicked problem.

Cultural Probes

To empathize with the youth from the food education programs I created a set of cultural probes. The goal of these was to gather inspirational data about their lives, values, and thoughts that could disclose tacit information.

Food Justice Manifesto

Futurist Food Justice Manifesto was a project created to imagine a better food future. It is meant to encourage people to think about an alternative food system, and to provoke actionable behavior as a global food community.

Forbidden Fruits

Forbidden Fruits is an interactive map of public access to edible fruits in NYC, designed to draw attention to the issue of food deserts. The South Bronx has some of the highest rates of food insecurity in the country. However, foraging for food in NYC is illegal and this project highlights this contradiction.