Food Justice

The Social Justice Learning Institute
www.sjli-cp.org

What is Food Justice?

Food Justice is communities exercising their right to grow, sell, and eat healthy food. Healthy food is fresh, nutritious, affordable, culturally-appropriate and grown locally with care for the well-being of the land, workers, and animals. People practicing food justice leads to a strong local food system, self-reliant communities and a healthy environment.

SJLI Food Justice Efforts

Our organization is committed to addressing inequality in the food system, we impact this issue in several ways: Direct provision of affordable, healthy, locally grown, organic, culturally relevant food through both our gardens and orchards but also through partnering with organizations that have higher yield such as the South Central Farmer's Association to bring healthy food options to our community (including CSA boxes). Additionally, we work directly with the City of Inglewood on policies that can help to transform the local food system, create greater sovereignty and re-imagine our city-space in innovative ways that offer greater opportunities for a localized food system. We outreach and educate not only youth in our community but also adult community members through workshops, environmental literacy courses and hands-on opportunities in our gardens and orchards. Finally, we're developing a business structure for added-value products to create a worker-owned, profit sharing and a cooperative economic development strategy.

The Need

We realize that in many communities, especially communities of color, individuals often lack affordable and accessible healthy food options. Existing food options such as fast-food restaurants, liquor stores and low-quality chain supermarkets stem from systemic challenges facing these communities and historical barriers preventing access. Research shows that in neighborhoods where access to affordable, fresh fruits and vegetables is limited, the risk of obesity, heart disease, diabetes, high cholesterol, stroke, hypertension increases (visit www.cdc.gov/obesity/causes/health.html to learn more).

Видео Food Justice канала Social Justice Learning Institute