World Food Day 2019

Sarah Montgomery, The Garden's Edge

This year's global celebration of World Food Day (Healthy Diets for a #ZeroHunger World) calls for action across sectors to make healthy and sustainable diets affordable and accessible to everyone. At the same time, it calls on everyone to start thinking about what we eat.

As part of our celebration in Albuquerque, we invited three organizations that promote the cultivation of locally sourced and native plants to help address the food gaps in the Albuquerque area.

The East Valencia Urban Garden Program, The Garden's Edge and its Guatemalan partner Qachuu Aloom, and  the South Valley farmers association Agri-Cultura Network offered examples of how they promote sustainability, availability, and local options for food production. Two students and the principal from St. Therese school also spoke about the vegetable garden and greenhouse present on the school grounds.

A Focus on Human Needs
As a secondary theme, we looked on efforts to address local human needs, including  the five faith communities/organizations that came together during a refugee crisis, the challenges faced by two schools in the Albuquerque South Valley with primarily Latino and immigrant populations, and a collaboration between The Lighthouse of New Mexico mosque and the Albuquerque Baha’i community to offer meals for homeless people in Albuquerque. Videos and/or accounts of all our stories will be featured in subsequent posts.

Manjeet Kuar leads Sikh chant

In between the seven stories that resonated with nearly 70 people who attended the event, we were also fortunate to have two prayer/reflections from the Albuquerque Sikh Gurdwara and a Cherokee closing blessing

As has been our tradition for the past four years, David Poole taught participants the World Food Day chant that he composed (words and music) for our first celebration in 2016. Keri Sutter developed some movements to go along with the chant, which we have used for all four of our annual celebrations. 

Achieving Zero Hunger is not only about working to alleviate hunger, but also nourishing people, while nurturing the planet.  World Food Day 2019

Our World Food Day event began outdoors by with a focus on sustainability and the organizations that place importance on local food production, sound environmental practices and resiliency.  We hope you enjoy these stories.

East Valencia Urban Garden Program
Lindsey Diaz related the first story about the communities of Meadow Lake and El Cerro-Monterey Park, which created a food system and community enhancement model in an area that had long been a food desert.

There was consensus that one of the best ways to build a stronger and more resilient community to climate change was for the area to produce its own food locally, and that this would also help the economy. And that these efforts these efforts should be emphasized working with youth and kids.

The Garden's Edge and Qachu Aloom
The Albuquerque-based organization provides resources and training to farmers and community organizations that fight environmental degradation, global climate change, loss of small-scale farms, and the erosion of indigenous cultural knowledge. Qachuu Aloom Mother Earth Association, based in Rabinal, Guatemala, works closely with The Garden's Edge on these same goals. In this video, Sarah Montgomery and Josselin Chun Cojom spoke of the work of the two organizations, offering a presentation on the use of amaranth. 

We've had a lot of success working with amaranth. It's native from Mesoamerica, but it's also grown in New Mexico. It's very weedy. You'll find it a .lot of growing in cracks, and it's probably one of the plants that you pull out of your garden when you're weeding. But it's also super highly nutritious. You can eat the leaves and you can eat the seeds.

The Garden at St. Therese Catholic School 
Principal Donna Illebrun and students Hayden Rodriguez and Willow Luna spoke about the vegetable garden and greenhouse located on the grounds of St. Therese School in Albuquerque. 

When we got here, (the site) was in rubbles--all of this was all alsphalt, falling apart. We knew that we needed a safe place for our children to run and play and learn about the many blessings that our Earth has for us. Over 10 years ago, a grant was written, and we got our greenhouse that is very active in the lives (of our students).

Agri-Cultura Network 
Helga Garza spoke about the challenges facing farmers in the South Valley of Albuquerque and also the work of the Agri-Cultura Network, which provides access to local produce to promote nutrition and economic development through traditional and innovative agricultural practices. This presentation took place indoors in the church (so please pardon the echo).

As small farmers, we came together because we were on our last generation of traditional farmers, reaching (the ages) of late 50s to late 70s, and no longer having the strength to keep up their farming.  So in 2008, we sought farm techiques and a new generation of farmers.  In 2010, three of those farmers formed the cooperative. 

While the emphasis of our World Food Day celebration was on local sourcing and sustainability (see Part 1 and Part 2), we also promoted the ability of our faith communities to collaborate and to work together to address local human needs.

Jessica Corley and Rachel Sternheim, Congregation Albert

Helping Central American Refugees
Jessica Corley of Congregation Albert spoke of the commitment by her congregation and Nahalat Shalom to support asylum seekers from Central America earlier this year.

The two Jewish congregations were part of a broad coalition of faith communities that supported the asylees. Others involved in this work were Catholic Charities, Lutheran Family Services, St. Michael and All Angels Episcopal Church and Albuquerque Interfaith. '

Even though the federal government has shut down the flow of asylum seekers, Jewish Asylum Seekers Initiative continues to support efforts at the border by providing shelters in Juarez, Mexico, with life sustaining food, supplies and financial support.

In addition to the threat of violence from criminal organizations and drug traffickers, many of the asylees were forced to leave their homeland because of the impact of climate change on their ability to survive.  "Smallscale producers and rural communities remain the most vul-nerable to drought, an important socio-economic phenomenon given its effects on the loss of livelihoods, decapitalization of household economies, impoverishment and migration to over-populated urban centres," the Food and Agriculture Organization said in a recent report.

America Burciaga

SNAP, Title I and Support for Public Schools
The formula used by Albuquerque Public Schools for counting Title I eligibility is unfair to schools with a large number of immigrants.

America Burciaga, a student at South Valley Academy, spoke about the appeal she made at an APS School Board meeting. APS uses SNAP eligibility as opposed to school lunch forms.

I am both sad and disappointed that my school is being treated unequally because we have undocumented students.  Title I is a federal program designed to help all students, not just those that were born in the United states.  Most parents at South Valley Academy, just like my own mom and dad, came from different countries such as Mexico, Guatemala, El Salvador and so many others, looking for a better future, for themselves as well as their children.

The reliance on SNAP for the APS forumla could create additional elegibility problems in the future if the federal administration follows through with its threats to remove more people (including legal immigrants) from the SNAP rolls.

"Last spring, [the federal administration] put out a proposal for new time restrictions on food assistance for adults. This summer their proposal took power away from the states and made it harder for hungry families to access the help they need. And now, they’re going after poor people once again, taking $4.5 billion out of SNAP benefits over the next five years," said Food Policy Action. "Congress debated – and rejected – each of these cuts when it passed a bipartisan farm bill in 2018. So they’re going after hungry people through regulations."

A Baha'i-Muslim Outreach
The Lighthouse of New Mexico mosque and the Albuquerque Baha’i community are working together to offer meals for homeless people in Albuquerque. The two communities first became acquainted at the 2018 World Food Day  at La Mesa Presbyterian Church.The joint effort provides 250 to 300 meals each Thursday.

A special byproduct of their collaboration  are the joint prayer gatherings held before the members for the two groups and other in the community go out with food sacks to distribute in Albuquerque's International District (still known by some by its previous name of "the war zone.")

According to Caroline Hess, members of the Albuquerque Baha'i Community meet on Wednesday evenings by preparing sandwiches and other items. Two other volunteers prepare other items, including cookies baked with nutritional ingredients like whey.

The effort, said Hess, has expanded beyond the Baha'i-Muslim community, as other groups like the Bosque Center for Spiritual Living have joined in the collaboration.

We come together as friends, as partners, and it has made a difference in doubling our output of food for homeless people, but also bringing two communities together in friendship with kindness and honor and respect. One of those special parts of our program before we go out into the street is a joint prayer. It's really a special thing.   Imam Abdur Rauf, The Lighthouse of New Mexico

One of the Baha'i community's principles is that service is prayer. It is the greatest prayer to God is to care for his trust. His trust are the poor.  -Caroline Hess, Albuquerque Baha'i Community

Prayers, Reflections, Chants and Blessings
Our World Food Day celebration included two Sikh reflections, prayers and chants and a Cherokee closing blessing.

Dr. G. Dave Singh


Manjeet Kuar


Beverly Wilkins