Start with a question, like: Why can’t everyone have local food? And you’ll find more questions: Where does my food come from? How is it picked, processed, packaged and sold? Who does the picking, processing, packaging, and selling? Where is fresh food available? When? To whom?

She spent last week on a Food Justice Immersion Project trip with five students, including CKGC summer interns. To find answers, they kept asking questions: they spoke to a farmworker, a farmer, and the owner of a family-run fruit company; they visited Penn State Agriculture and Environment Center and the Central PA Food Bank; they ate dinner with low-income women involved Adams County’s Circles of Support and listened to them share stories during a poverty forum at the South Central Community Action Program.

The answers are many and complex, but part of the answer in Adams County, Christine said, is the Campus Kitchen: “We’re one of the community solutions that’s working.”

This summer, one of the CKGC interns will keep searching for answers by working on a community food assessment. She’ll consider current policies and identify priority areas for attention and hopefully share her work with the Adams County Food Policy Council. (More on CKGC’s work with the council next week!)

If your Campus Kitchen interested in some of the same questions, Christine recommends starting with general topics. Those topics can become conversations with people you already know in your community. See who they can you connect with and arrange times to meet and to talk.

For Christine, it wasn’t finding answers, but seeing others engage with the same questions, that was most rewarding. “To see the participants come to some of the same realizations I have was the best part,” she said.

Harvested spinach ends up in soup for CKGC clients!

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