Food advocacy is a skill that takes practice, patience, and dedication.

At Pilot Light, we believe that truly comprehensive Food Education cannot exist without including an exploration of food justice and advocacy for students of all ages. That’s why every year our Food Education Fellows end their time in the program with a student-led food advocacy project. These projects offer students the opportunity to engage with a food justice issue relevant to their community at a developmentally appropriate level. 

Today, we’re focusing on food advocacy projects from two Fellows from the 2023-24 school year: Regina Hanson and Monica Chamberlain, who both teach in the upstate and central New York area.*

*The work of these two teachers is sponsored in part by Pilot Light’s USDA Farm to School award, which is supporting 15 teachers in New York, Chicago, and additional areas across the country over the course of two years.

Building inter-school food connections in Schenectady 

Ms. Hanson is a middle and high school Family Consumer Sciences teacher at Schalmont Central School District in Schenectady, NY. During her time as a Food Education Fellow, Ms. Hanson worked with her 7th, 11th, and 12th grade students to build real-world food and cooking skills, with a heavy emphasis on how environmental, cultural, and social factors influence our food choices. 

For their food advocacy project, Ms. Hanson and her students dedicated their time and energy in an investment that will benefit their school community for years to come. Students worked with Ms. Hanson to secure a grant from their local credit union that funded the purchase of two new hydroponic grow towers for their school. These grow towers serve multiple uses: 

1. 1. Fresh ingredients: Schalmont Central high school students can gain real-world work experience by running a campus cafe where staff can purchase delicious food made by their students. Now, produce from the new grow towers is used in their cafe dishes, bringing them one step closer to being a “farm to table” location! 
   2. Improving food access: Produce not used in the school cafe is now available for middle school students to bring back to their families. Any middle school student is now allowed to pick fresh herbs, fruits, and vegetables to bring back home, thanks to the grow towers secured during Ms. Hanson’s food advocacy project! 

This single food advocacy project, completed in just a few short months, will benefit the entire school community for years to come. Ms. Hanson and her students are proof that just one classroom’s dedication and excitement can blossom into long-lasting, community-wide change. 

Student-led farm to school action in Hamilton, NY 

Monica Chamberlain is a central New York 6th grade teacher at Hamilton Central School. The surrounding community is largely farmland, and connecting her students to this aspect of their environment became a prominent theme during Monica’s Food Education lessons. 

For their food advocacy project, Monica’s classroom teamed up with local dairy farm Collins Creamery to run a “dairy drive” at their school. 6th graders joined forces to raise money for their cafeteria to source local milk from Collins, raising over $1,000 in just the first month of the drive. This was more than a fundraiser – this was a student-driven effort to make a schoolwide investment in local food. 

Their efforts raised enough funds to purchase almost an entire school year’s worth of mealtime milk, showcasing the power of student leadership to make a meaningful difference not just in their cafeteria, but also in the surrounding community. In addition, Monica’s students raised enough funds to purchase seven weeks’ worth of Collins milk products for their local senior living facility, spreading the joy of local food to a population that experiences a high level of food insecurity in their community. Students also made over 300 shelf-stable meal kits and donated them to seniors in their area.

This partnership with Collins Creamery also gave students the opportunity to visit this “cow to carton” dairy farm in person, where they learned how to make butter, saw cheese curd production up close, and witnessed the milk processing procedure for themselves. 

Both Ms. Hanson and Monica Chamberlain’s food advocacy projects demonstrate the importance of connecting young learners to their wider food system. Students have the power to make change not just for themselves, but for their peers, families, and fellow community members. Food advocacy projects allow students to take their food knowledge and put it into action, making the food system better for us all.