Santa Fe's Youth Food Cadre, a group of 13 AmeriCorps hosted by Earth Care, are hard at work at schools, in neighborhoods, community-based organizations, and at the city to build a sustainable, just food system.

Their goal is to ensure access to fresh, local food for Santa Feans in need - especially children. The AmeriCorps members will put in over 20,500 hours this year to re-localize our food system, conduct neighborhood outreach, and teach the next generation how to eat well, and take part in building a local, sustainable food system.

Members of the Cadre are working at the Farmers Market to promote and expand the food stamp and micro-loan program; doing outreach to inform residents of resources available to them to save money and grow food or conserve water and energy; working with K-12 public school students to learn garden-based science, grow food in school gardens, and cook homegrown meals; and doing after school programs to support the innovative community-improvement projects of the teenage Youth Allies Organizers.

The Youth Food Cadre AmeriCorps Program is hosted by Earth Care (formerly Earth Care International) in collaboration with members of the Santa Fe Food Project Coalition, which includes: the Santa Fe Alliance, Cooking With Kids, Earth Care, Farm to Table, SF Food Policy Council, SF City and County, the Santa Fe Community College, the SF Farmers Market Institute, and SF Public Schools. Bringing these organizations together to train the YFC about the intersecting issues impacting the food system, increases the potential of strengthening the local food system as a whole.

Being an AmeriCorps site is allowing Santa Fe to get serious about launching City-wide sustainability initiatives, and conducting more educational outreach in underserved communities - work that would have been difficult to achieve without AmeriCorps! Through the systemic approach of the YFC, we hope that neighborhoods will have the opportunity to garden, that there will be more full bellies because snacks are growing right outside, and that kids will eat raw vegetables straight from the plants they've grown.

For more information about how to use your time, talent, and treasure for this cause, visit Earth Care's website at www.earthcare.org or call 983-6896.