Food Forward

This past weekend as part of Oxy's MLK Day of Service I got to work with an organization working on Food Justice issues in and around Los Angeles.  This organization was called Food Forward.

The organization uses the definition of Fruitanthropy (which I think is a made up word) to lay out their mission statement as "the picking, donating, or distributing of fruit for humanitarian purposes."  They are a gleening organization that picks fruit in big and small quantities--from orchards to family homes.  Fourteen of my fellow Oxy students and I divided into three groups last Saturday and each group went to a different home in northeast Los Angeles.  We worked all morning picking the fruit trees in people's backyards.  The house I went to had one orange and one lemon tree.  The other houses had orange, tangerine, and grapefruit trees.  Food Forward is very flexible, they pick any kind of fruit tree (including the god of all fruit trees--avocados), make it really easy for people to sign up to help pick the trees, and make it very simple to register trees on your property that are ripe for the picking.

While my group was picking we heard a little girl in the house crying, and she just went on and on.  We were confused at first but soon realized that she was staring right out the window and crying because she saw us taking the fruit from her trees. It was real nice to realize that this young girl had realized how blessed she was to have food growing in her backyard.  Food Forward's work has the ability to transform the way that people see their own backyards and the nature that surrounds them in a way that can make people value and realize the charitable potential of their food producing plants and trees.

After just a couple of hours in the three locations we loaded up our vans and drove to the Downtown Women's Center on skid row.  There, our group unloaded over 900 pounds of fruit to help stock the center's kitchen.  The Women's Center makes a point to distribute two servings of fruit a day to the women they work with.  As soon as we carted in our 17 boxes they began handing the women tangerines as an after lunch snack.  It was amazing and reassuring to see the women running the shelter interact so positively and genuinely with the women using the center's services.  After dropping off the fruit our group went to the store attached to the center that features crafts made by some of the women for sale along with coffee and cookbooks.  All profits from the store are given back to the Center.  I bought a cookbook called LA's Original Farmer's Market Cookbook, which I'm very excited to use.

I am looking forward to working with Food Forward more in the future and you should too.  Sign up to be a volunteer on their website (http://www.foodforward.org/) and if there happens to be a pick in your neighborhood then RSVP! Its as simple as that and only requires a couple of hours.  But be fast as all their picks for February filled up within three days of posting their schedule!  It is evident that this organization will be doing good far down the road as they expand to encompass more of the SoCal over the next decade. Food Justice House salutes you Food Forward!