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Emerging from the intensive experience of securing food for thousands of our neighbors, we believe food insecurity must be eliminated at its systemic roots. PIN is soon to open, in Flatbush, the One World Community Kitchen. This kitchen will house a Food Justice Leadership/ Food Industry workforce training program and a farm and craft stand. PIN will begin the Food Justice and Culinary Leadership program by Summer, 2022, as soon as we identify an appropriate space. Priority participants will be recent immigrants and other women for whom training in a skill based upon their cooking knowledge and in entrepreneurship would mean greater economic independence.
The program will:
Train women to earn NYC Food Protection Certificates and learn soft skill employment skills as they produce meal prep kits, cut salad and fruit, samosas, baked goods, juices, smoothies, and other marketable items.
Teach entrepreneurship and basic business skills by running a farm and craft stand on weekends.
Equally important, the training will build participants’ knowledge of the global food system, emphasizing the right of all to safe, healthy, and adequate food, and elevate their roles as food equity peer advocates within their communities. Eventually, we plan to graduate at least 100 Food Justice Peer Advocates each year. This program has received start-up commitments from the New York City Council and New York City’s Participatory Budgeting Program.
To PIN, Food Justice means:
To PIN, Food Justice means:
Universal access to fresh, nutritious, local, culturally appropriate, and affordable food.
Climate-friendly systems to farm, produce, and distribute food that rejuvenates our air, water, and soil.
Good food jobs as a pathway to economic independence and self-determination that is accessible to all.
Consumer-farmer connections allow people to know who grows their food, where, and how it is grown.
Learn from the farming practices and food systems of our elders, including indigenous people worldwide, and act for the generations not yet born.
The Birth of the One World Farm
The Birth of the One World Farm
To immerse its food justice advocates in 360° learning, PIN seeks to connect its peer advocates with the burgeoning sustainable farm and food movement in Upstate New York. PIN is in the process of purchasing and developing a rural campus for its program, a 2.9-acre lakeside property in the town of Copake, in Columbia County, New York. The parcel consists of a 7-bedroom suburban-style house along with a barn-sized recreational building and open space. The property previously has served as a day camp for disabled children and as a residence for disabled adults.
PIN is seeking to develop the Copake site, located at 3 Cross Street, to continue the parcel’s long- standing social mission, with two major objectives:
PIN is seeking to develop the Copake site, located at 3 Cross Street, to continue the parcel’s long- standing social mission, with two major objectives:
1. Extend the Brooklyn-based Food Justice and food preparation training to include a direct connection to farmers who grow healthy food. Participants will learn to prepare value-added products made from Hudson Valley produce which would then be sold at PIN’s Brooklyn farm stand and distributed for sale in retail outlets through New York State. The training facility will be based upon the conversion of its spacious kitchen space to a fully accessible institutional kitchen suitable for group training and food production, without barriers to those with physical or mental disabilities. This will make possible offering training to a full range of people: PIN participants who would travel up from Brooklyn for brief stays and people with disabilities and those with special needs already living in Columbia County, all of whom might convert such culinary training into jobs. The kitchen, with or without PIN’s trainers, will be available for visits and rental by groups serving special populations and local school classes interested in hands-on learning about sustainable food production and diets.
The facility is well suited to offer short stay respites to enjoy the beauty of Columbia County and the lake site to trainees and their children, much as bungalow colonies, summer camps and Catskill hotels served immigrants and other large city residents in the 20th Century.
2. Net Zero farming will use a portion of the site to grow hydroponic microgreens and herbs in ways that would serve as a model for small-scale, sustainable farming in harmony with the lake ecology. The operation would maintain and even enhance the pristine nature of the lake through technologies such as gray water recovery and biodigesting (rapid composting) invasive weeds and goose waste. The main building on the site already uses solar hot water heating.
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