Yale Sustainable Food Program

food justice

Community-Based Food Justice Support in New Haven | GFF '25

Community-Based Food Justice Support in New Haven
This post was written by Meryl Braconnier as a part of her 2025 O’Shaughnessy Global Food Fellowship.

As soon as I parked the rusty van outside the senior center, it was game time—three hours of constant movement and flow, setting up the temporary farmstand for the eagerly awaiting customers. I focused on one motion at a time, in a chaotic dance with my two coworkers—open the trunk, set up the tents and tables, lug out the coolers upon coolers of vegetables, stack them high in rustic, wooden baskets, hang up our signs, turn on our pay station—all under the watchful gaze of dozens of elderly folks, with their walkers, canes, and wheelchairs, lined up against the dull beige bricks of the Bella Vista Senior Center. The front of the line had been waiting for nearly two hours, securing their primary selection of the local vegetables and fruit.

Residents at Bella Vista Senior Center lined up at the start of Common Ground’s Mobile Market on July 15, 2025. Photo Credit: Meryl Braconnier

Every Tuesday since mid-July, I’ve assisted with Common Ground’s Mobile Market—a farmstand on wheels that brings fresh, local, affordable produce directly to New Haven communities afflicted by food apartheid. Our diverse customer base contends with mobility, transportation, language, and financial challenges, on top of limited grocery stores, making it difficult, if not impossible, to access and afford local, nutrient-dense produce. The Mobile Market literally meets people where they live with cheaper, whole-sale prices, accepting federal benefits and offering 50% off purchases using the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), thanks to a matching donation from CitySeed, New Haven’s farmers markets organizer.

This summer, I furthered local food justice initiatives in New Haven, supported by the Yale Sustainable Food Program’s Global Food Fellowship and the Yale School of the Environment’s Carpenter, Leonard G. Fund. I split my time between Common Ground, an environmental justice charter high school, urban farm, and environmental education center, and Gather New Haven, the nonprofit that manages the city’s 40+ community gardens and offers community development programming.

During this practical, on-the-ground experience, I considered how to increase access and connection to healthy foods and nature through Common Ground’s Mobile Market and community gatherings. I also explored a new community engagement strategy with Gather New Haven’s garden network: the NYC Urban Field Station’s Stewardship Salons.

From Field to Feast: Increasing Food Access in New Haven

Through heat waves and rain, I assisted with all aspects of Common Ground’s vegetable production from planting to harvest and helped manage their Mobile Market outreach and delivery. Our farm team raked, shoveled, mulched, weeded, pruned, harvested, and sweated. Under our attentive care, our diverse crops, like kale, tomatoes, parsley, and beans, flourished on the 1-acre site. Urban growing spaces, like Common Ground’s farm and Gather’s community gardens, are largely constrained by size, soils, and resources. Their beauty and bounty radically resist our country’s cracked, inequitable systems of food production, distribution, and consumption, offering healing experiences and nourishment.

2025 farm intern team at Common Ground posing by freshly prepped beds for winter squash plantings. From left to right: Isabela, Linda, Pauline, Ethan, and Meryl. Photo Credit: Diane Litwin

With the Trump Administration’s devastating cuts and rollbacks in funding for environmental justice and food access programs, Common Ground was unable to hire a Mobile Market manager for the 2025 season. Thankfully, my coworker Ethan Reynolds and I received Yale funding to carry on with the Mobile Market’s 14th season.

Although our capacity was limited—dropping from the typical 5 stops per week to 1 stop per week—we held seven Mobile Market stops from June to August, split between the Bella Vista Senior Center, Cornell Scott Hill Health Center, and the Towers at Tower Lane, senior living community. At those seven, two-hour stops, we serviced nearly 350 customers. About 60% of our customers purchased their produce with federal benefits from the Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) for low-income seniors or for nutritionally at-risk women, infants, and children.

Myself and my coworker Takeira assisting a Tower 1 resident with her joyful kale purchase. Photo Credit: Karisma Quintas

All the fruits and vegetables sold at the Mobile Market are grown at Common Ground or on Connecticut farms within a 20-mile radius of New Haven. The Yale Farm donates crops when they have a larger harvest. The Mobile Market upholds a dignified dimension of food access work: ensuring people can eat healthy, high-quality foods that are relevant to their culture. I see the vital need for the Mobile Market in the long lines of customers waiting at nearly every stop and in the smiles on people’s faces when they share how they plan to prepare their fresh produce.

Stewardship Salons: Connection to Action to Resilience

In collaboration with Zion Jones, Gather’s Community Engagement Coordinator and Environmental Educator, and with the support of the NYC Urban Field Station, we developed and hosted six Stewardship Salons, facilitated by diverse community leaders, on the topics of safety on the urban farm, compost management, fermented DIY fertilizers, communal gardening values, local indigenous histories, and building sacred relationships with the land. Through my organization, creativity, and communication, I provided Gather New Haven with a transformative, community engagement model that helped them build connections to their communities and other social justice groups and facilitators.

Stewardship Salons are collaborative co-learning spaces where participants engage with place-based topics and exchange knowledge, building individual and collective capacity to care for natural resources, land, and communities (Stewardship Salon Guide, 2024). The Stewardship Salon framework emerged from a 2017 workshop titled “Learning from Place” hosted by Native Hawaiian master teacher, Kekuhi Kealiikanakaoleohaililani, bringing together Hawaiian and NYC stewardship practitioners. Since 2017, the NYC Urban Field Station (USDA Forest Service and NYC Parks Department) have hosted over 30 Stewardship Salons for the personal and professional development of their diverse stewardship practitioner network.

The workshops provided safe spaces for an open dialogue amongst gardeners, garden managers, and community members, catalyzing action through connection. Through our Safety on the Urban Farm salon, Gather staff and board members met Carmen Mendez of New Haven’s Livable Cities Initiative. Within a week of the salon, Mendez helped fulfill a priority safety measure for Ferry Street Farm in Fair Haven: installing flood lamps on the telephone poles looking over the growing space.

Gather's first Stewardship Salon, Saftey on the Urban Farm, at Ferry Street Farm in Fair Haven on July 9, 2025. Facilitated by Sadiann Ozment, a Gather NHV Board Member. Photo Credit: Meryl Braconnier

At our salon on Communal Gardening and Gather New Haven’s values hosted by Nadine Horton, founder and manager at the Armory Community Garden, we brought together 10 garden coordinators who oversee the volunteers and growing activities at Gather’s dispersed garden sites. This listening session provided a rare yet essential opportunity for the garden coordinators to get to know each other and share knowledge, fostering resilience between the urban growing spaces. One main outcome was the plan to create a shared communication channel, via Slack or Discord, for the garden coordinators to stay connected.

Following the salon, one of the participants emailed us with gratitude:

“Thank you all for organizing this salon with a joyous spirit and generous hospitality. [In my opinion,] it was much needed on so many levels: 

·       reinforcing/building relationships among garden leaders. 

·       having a say in the future focus and sustainability of this organization. 

·       visiting the lovely possibility of what could be as set by the Armory garden.”

Nadine Horton facilitating a conversation on communal gardening values with Gather's garden coordinators on July 19, 2025 at the Armory Community Garden. Photo credit: Meryl Braconnier.

The Stewardship Salons on Compost Management and Korean Natural Farming (KNF) provided folks with the skills and knowledge to maintain their own garden spaces through regenerative practices. At the KNF Salon facilitated by Gather’s executive director, Jonathón Savage, 19 participants weeded Mugwort (Artemisia vulgaris) from an overgrown garden bed, stripped the leaves into shared bowls, and massaged the fragrant leaves with brown sugar. Everyone took home some of the communal mixture, packed tight into glass jars covered with paper towels, to ferment into a low-cost, DIY plant amendment.

The final two workshops on Local Indigenous Histories and Building Sacred Relationships with the Land inspired deeper connections to place through historical context and meditative offerings of thanks to the earth. Guided by Clan Mother Shoran Waupatukuay Piper and Babalawo Enroue Onígbọ̀nná Halfkenny, I left small tokens of gratitude by the banks of the gurgling West River: lavender, tobacco, walnuts, and a slice of tomato.

As I gave my offerings, I lifted my gaze to meet the steady, glowing gaze of West Rock, illuminated by the setting sun. I thanked the cliff for watching over me this summer as I built relationships with Common Ground, Gather, community members, and the land, helping to feed my neighbors and build upon the deep, rich topsoil of community-driven, food justice initiatives in the Elm City.

Acknowledgments

Thank you to the Yale Sustainable Food Program’s Global Food Fellowship and the Yale School of the Environment’s Carpenter, Leonard G. Fund for making my summer financially possible.

Thank you to the farm team at Common Ground, Deborah Greig, Diane Litwin, and Victoria Zucco. Thank you to Gather New Haven’s executive director, Jonathón Savage, to Zion Jones, and to the Farm Based Wellness Program coordinators, Ruth Torres and Celin.

Thank you to the Stewardship Salon facilitators, Sadiann Ozment, Nadine Horton, Takeira Bell, Jonathon Savage, Clan Mother Shoran Waupatukuay Piper, and Enroue Onígbọ̀nná Halfkenny.

Thank you to the NYC Urban Field Station team, especially Neha Savant and Lindsay Campbell, for your mentorship and guidance.

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Political Dessert with Paola Velez

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The following blog post shares more from Paola Velez during her visit Paola visit to campus as part of the Yale Sustainable Food Program’s “Cooking Across the Black Diaspora” series. A themed line-up for Chewing the Fat, these events were conducted in collaboration with the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration.

In doing so, the series commemorated Black History Month, and the 50th anniversary for both the Afro-American Cultural Center (fondly referred to as “the House”) and the Yale Department of African American Studies. Ezra Stiles College and La Casa Cultural also supported Paola’s time on campus.

Paola’s visit included a podcast on Chewing the Fat, lunch and flavor pairing workshop using frio frio (shaved ice) at La Casa, and a public conversation with then Head of College Stephen Pitti at Ezra Stiles.

Chef Paola Velez’s earliest food memories are from the Dominican Republic, where she lived with her mother in a sleepy town known for cacao farming. But even after she and her mother moved to the Bronx, she still had strong memories of food. The mothers in their mostly Dominican neighborhood gathered often for their families to share meals. One mother would bring the rice, another the beans, and so on. Until they had enough for everyone. Food insecurity may have affected her childhood, but her community came together to cook together. There she learned hospitality. She learned how to share a meal.

This act of sharing food remains an important ideal to Velez. “It’s the great equalizer: food is that moment in time when we all have to be quiet and eat.” By cooking for people, she is able to direct the conversation that they will have with their food and each other. At the moment, such conversations center the past. Velez may cook with plenty of local Mid-Atlantic ingredients, but she elaborates on their history by connecting her sourcing to anywhere that the African slave trade touched: not only from the Americas, but Asia too. Soy sauce, for example, sneaks into her desserts for a touch of umami.

After all, Velez considers it her duty to cook with history, especially as a pastry chef. Everything associated with dessert, like alcohols, sugars, and fruits, comes from the African slave trade. Her awareness of the cultural significance of her food allows Velez to ask all her patrons to grapple with its violent history.

But she does more than spark conversations about history. She asks people to do something about it. And here, Velez leads by example. As an executive chef, Velez makes a point of hiring marginalized people, especially women of color and trans people. She never had a culinary mentor, but Velez hopes to utilize her position of power to open doors for people like her. To do this, she built a team at Kith/Kin founded on trust and mutual respect. “People need to feel safe at work to succeed,” she explained. She learned how to be a good manager, and teaches those below her the same practices. She asks questions. She listens.

To hear her talk, it is clear that Velez is much more proud of her work with people than her work with food. She spoke excitedly about how she brings a rotating staff with her to banquets and offsite events, so that everyone has a chance to find their future employer and move up in the ranks. Her goal is to train her staff well and have them move on, rising to power in a different restaurant and opening those same doors for marginalized people in their own place of work. Little by little, Velez is creating a community of love in the world for world.

She asks us to do the same. One of the most emotional moments was when Velez explained how much it meant for her to be here, at Yale, talking to a room of aspiring leaders. “I just cook food,” she said, but that food is an entryway point to places like Yale and the people “with the king’s ear, who can mobilize change.” Who she will be voting for in years to come. Who she will be trusting to teach her children. Who will be making policy to make changes for the better. People like us, who go to Yale or work in DC, are the people Velez hopes to influence through her food. She tells us her story in a way we cannot ignore. At least, I hope not. Just like there is no such thing as a free lunch, there is no such thing as an apolitical dessert.


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Celebrating Foods of the Black Diaspora

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For Black History Month, the Afro-American Cultural Center and Yale Sustainable Food Program have partnered together for a special event series, “Cooking Across the Black Diaspora.” The collaboration honored and commemorated this year’s 50th anniversary for both the Afro-American Cultural Center and Yale Department of African American Studies.

“Cooking Across the Black Diaspora” weaves into the Sustainable Food Program’s long-standing speaker series, known as Chewing the Fat. Building upon the conversations with past Chewing the Fat guests like Michael Twitty and Leah Penniman, we recognize the food traditions and innovations of Afro and Black-identifying peoples from across the world. In hosting Nyesha Arrington, Paola Velez, Kiki Louya, and Bryant Terry, this series held space for four chefs to share their stories, of food and identity, heritage and resilience, healing and justice.

The series culiminated in an evening celebrating the foods of the Black diaspora. Students and New Haven community members shared reflections on sweet potato pie and chosen family, soup joumou’s history in Haitian liberation, and the evolution of rice across continents. Logan Klutse ’22 offered a poem contrasting growing up hungry with the abundances of Yale’s dining halls.

Bryant Terry then followed, noting while he's proud of his cookbook Vegetable Kingdom, his live events mean little if they did not inspire community and action around Black foodways. Cooking to the tune of Bjork's "Hunter", Bryant demoed his book’s carrot soup, sharing his beginnings as a food justice activist inspired by the Black Panthers’ Free Breakfast program. Besides a few cooking tips, Bryant spoke more on the powerful connections between Black cooking and broader racial justice. The evening closed with conversation, book signings, and more of Bryant’s delicious carrot soup with Atticus sourdough.

Special thanks to the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration, Saybrook College, LoveFed New Haven, People Get Ready Books, and the Table Underground for also supporting Bryant’s visit.

Icon Image from Bryant Terry’s Vegetable Kingdom. Photography by Noa Hines ’21.

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Detroit's Hyperlocal with Kiki Louya

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What does building a hyper-local food movement around equity look like?

Kiki Louya is a born Detroiter and Congolese-American chef, who founded Folk and The Farmer’s Hand. Together, the restaurant and grocery store have advanced the fair treatment of food and farm workers alike, supporting thriving urban agriculture and food justice efforts in Detriot. Also a co-owner at the all-women hospitality group, Nest Egg Detroit, Kiki visited Yale on February 24 to speak more about triple bottom-line practices (environment protection, social responsibility, economic success) in food business.

Kiki’s visit was the third in our “Cooking Across the Black Diaspora” series. A themed line-up for Chewing the Fat, this series was conducted in collaboration with the Afro-American Cultural Center at Yale, and the Yale Center for the Study of Race, Indigeneity, and Transnational Migration. In doing so, it commemorated Black History Month, and the 50th anniversary for both the Afro-American Cultural Center (fondly referred to as “the House”) and the Yale Department of African American Studies. Timothy Dwight College also supported Kiki’s time on campus.

Following a podcast session with YSFP student Thomas Hagen ’20, Kiki shared lunch with Yale students & staff, as well as New Haven community members at the House. Emphasizing her connection to food through her father’s cooking, Kiki spoke of the unapologetic ways she often brought her Congolese heritage into her menus and work, even when her career in hospitality may have been at odds with her own family’s wishes for her; later that afternoon, a number of students were able to enjoy cooking with Kiki, learning of a Congolese peanut stew Kiki’s father often made for her as a child. A perfect dish for winter!

YSFP student Kenia Hale ’21 moderated Kiki’s public conversation, exploring how Folk and the Farmer’s Hand have worked to address inequity, from tipping policies to empower urban agriculture in Black neighborhoods. The next day, Kiki was able to delve further into Detroit’s urban “revival” and working with many stakeholders like activists and farmers as part of a class visit to YSFP Director Mark Bomford’s college seminar, "CSYC 312: Sustainable Approaches to Food & Agriculture.”