Youth and Intergenerational Education on Farm
PURPOSE
Soul Fire Farm is committed to dismantling the oppressive structures that misguide our food system. Part of this work involves reconnecting youth to their innate belonging to land and restoring each person’s rightful place of empowerment in the food system. We offer a limited number of one-day educational workshops for youth and inter-generational groups, as well as a 3-day L.O.L (Liberation on Land) Youth Immersion program. We strive to include youth in all spaces in our farm programming.
One-day Youth Booking Request
Day-long youth visits slots are filled for 2024. Please fill out our waitlist form to be informed of available dates for 2025
One-day Youth Program FAQ
Learn important details about eligibility,
program dates,
general schedule,
meal options, and more
L.O.L. Youth
Immersion
L.O.L. (Liberation on Land) is an immersive
3-day program for B.I.P.O.C. youth,
ages 14-16
CURRICULUM
The following are activities used at Soul Fire Farm to deepen young people’s understanding of the food system. To the extent possible, we base our curriculum on research that shows that young people make healthy choices when they LOVE their community and natural world and when they see that their own POSITIVE ACTION makes a difference.
Before using any of this curriculum in your own program, please read our integrity guidelines.
Food Justice
- The Media Does Not Have My Mind: Young people create advertisements about healthy food and learn about the role of media in our diets.
- Food Justice Charades: A fun activity to learn basic food justice terminology.
- Perspectives Walk: This activity reveals hidden assumptions about food, hunger, and justice.
- Collage Biographies: Develop a deeper understanding of the leaders in the movements for food sovereignty and sustainability by creating collages.
- Land Loss and Resistance: In this activity, the learners read history of POC Land loss in the USA, select important events, and perform them to one another in dramatic form.
- Take it Home: Here are a few ideas for taking what you learned on the farm and applying it at home – seed bombs, food justice stickering, food traditions interviews, and creating recipes for home cooking.
- Prisons and Land: Explore the connections between mass incarceration and food injustice using profound statistics and human sculpture.
- Scramble for Wealth and Power: This Food Project activity investigates the roots of poverty and the perspective of the different classes.
- Food Fight: This film and accompanying discussion follows a young person through the homicidal realities of the industrial food system. Young people can follow up by creating their own music video telling the truth about food.
Mama Earth
- Earthworm Count: Count the number of earthworms in a soil sample to determine soil health.
- Stone Balancing: Attention, focus, and patience are the key to transforming simple stones into works of art.
- Nature is My Teacher: Young people spend a period of time sitting alone in nature, paying attention, and making observations.
- Scavenger Hunt: In this activity, participants work together in small groups to find the following items around the farm. The objectives are to get moving, have fun, remember what was learned on the tour, cooperate, and observe the environment.
- Forest Labyrinth: The purpose of this exercise is to awaken to senses and the heart to the present moment in the forest, including the smells, textures, sounds, and images.
- Capturing Beauty: Learners head off into the natural environment to capture beautiful images with their camera phones.
- Banking on Seeds: Participants learn to identify and save seeds.
- Soil Texture: Participants use “texture by feel” and “soil settling” methods to determine particle size in soil.
- Investigating Insects: Participants collect, observe, and analyze insects.
Organizing and Leadership
Youth have the power to be agents of change in society. We can customize activities ranging including appreciative inquiry, consensus decision-making, meeting facilitation, talking to policymakers, community mapping, and organizing focus groups.
- Real Talk: A method for constructively sharing feedback and deepening working relationships.
- Community Building: These community building activities use song, dialogue, listening, and art to deepen connection between people.
- Theater of the Oppressed: Through series of exercises, games, techniques, and drama forums, the aim is to be able to understand the social reality and then to change it.
- Youth Food Justice Pledge: a commitment to personal and community food sovereignty
Semester Long Curriculum
On sustainable agriculture based on case studies in southern Mexico. It is classroom-ready and can be used in its entirety or in part:
- Global Sustainable Food Project, written with support from Fulbright DAT
Leah was extremely patient and caring for every child, and structured the day perfectly. I could not have thought that the day would have been so much fun. Each child got so much out of the experience that we did not realize they would get when going to the farm.
Multiple kids had conversations about the farm’s purpose on the way home. They discussed that at home sometimes they don’t get fresh fruit, and that other people are even worse off than them. Leah really did a great job explaining each and every point she made.
For Akim*, he got so much one on one genuine attention that he has been craving for so long. He often times is spoken to very negatively because his behaviors can be so impulsive and intrusive. The older gentleman that was working on the garden bed, took him under his wing for the day. He gave Akim* so many caring messages and had a really good time with Akim*. It was very nice for all of us to see. Both he and Lyla* were very proud of their masonry work that they did with the men.“
*pseudonyms