COMPASSIONATE COMMUNITIES

Food Justice for All Application Spring 2024

Food Justice for All Program

Compassionate Communities is a free program structured around a whole child pedagogic approach that promotes the integration of core social-emotional learning skills into both classroom and school culture, supports the use of effective restorative justice practices, and expands the reach of these goals and practices to encompass meaningful connections to students’ lived experience and the real world issues that impact their communities.

As of Fall 2023, Compassionate Communities has expanded from a single year, contest and school district-based program to one that is city-wide, and is now designed to provide on-going engagement and financial support in partnership with participating schools over time. Food Justice is such a critical issue, and one that profoundly impacts both our local communities right now, and our global future on the planet, that we will be focusing our Compassionate Communities program moving forward around working with schools to foster youth leadership in building towards more equitable, resilient, and humane food systems. HEART has been selected by the NYC DOE in conjunction with the Food Education Roadmap as one of the approved providers of food education services in NYC Food Education Service  Providers .

The Compassionate Communities Food Justice for All program provides cash grants of up to $1,000 to support participating schools in achieving their food justice goals by bringing teaching tools, topical resources, and on-going staff consultation to K-8 schools, partnering with them in developing impactful student-led service actions that address issues of food equity, advance local food sovereignty, and support the critical transformation of our food systems to a humane and agroecological model both locally and globally.

Participating schools receive grade-level lessons, activities, and family engagement ideas that explore ways to bring more culturally affirming and affordable healthy foods into our city neighborhoods, the important role of urban gardens in addressing food equity and promoting habitat restoration and climate resilience, humane farming practices, and the wider environmental impacts of industrial agriculture. HEART educators work directly with our school partners to provide ongoing support in developing individualized learning experiences that meet their students’ needs, and in connecting schools with potential community partners for service actions that are in-depth, student-led, and build towards equitable, resilient, and thriving neighborhoods.

We know that each school and neighborhood is unique, so all of our support materials are offered as a springboard for the kind of exciting and creative adaptation we’ve seen in our previous Compassionate Communities programs, whose school  presentations you can explore on their respective pages on this site.

A global pandemic has taught us that we are truly one world. What that world will look like as we move past the current crises and confront the challenges that we know are ahead, will depend on the courage, vision, and principles that guide our youth, as they will inherit the job. The Compassionate Communities program was created out of our deep commitment to furthering this mission, by encouraging students to exercise their capacity for positive agency and self-expression, and to make reparative connections with the people, animals, and natural spaces of their community by taking action on their behalf.  We look forward to working with you and your students!

For more information please contact Jeannie Russell at jeannie@TeachHeart.org