Category Archives: Neighborhood

Adventuring to Port Richmond High School

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Yesterday, LC 13 ventured outside the classroom to Port Richmond High School. We all received a walking tour of the culinary arts program. I couldn’t believe that the high school students are able to prepare meals together. The director of the program explained that the students learn about the meal they will be preparing on Monday. They start preparing and cooking the meal on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. On Friday, each group is able to taste the meal they have been working so hard to make. This sounded so interesting I wish my high school had this kind of program.

After a tour of the various kitchens, we we taken to a little garden that is located outside at the end of the hall. I found it extraordinary that this program really takes a hand-on approach to teach students good eating habits. Port Richmond High School is investing in this program so students could take what they learned in class and apply it to everyday life.The teachers focus on teaching recipes that are easy to make, yet good for you.FullSizeRender

When the bell rang for the next classes, Genesis and I decided to mentor together. I was  finally going able to meet my mentee. Rebecca is a sophomore at Port Richmond High School and she hopes to go to culinary school after graduating. I realized how this program has influenced her decision to pursue a culiarycareer. Over the next few weeks, I hope to build a friendly relationship with Rebecca and learn more about her. This experience will be very rewarding.

My Port Richmond Experience

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On October 8th, a beautiful Thursday morning my class and I ventured into Port Richmond. For our experiential learning in our LC’s, our class is going to take on the task of being suitable mentors for the students in Port Richmond High School. More specifically, the students a part of the schools’ culinary program. I remember first walking into the classroom and thinking, “Oh god, how am I going to mentor someone and help them out when I was in their position merely a few years ago!?” I was nervous but, at the same time excited. I enjoy helping other people out in whatever way I can. I get a sense of satisfaction from simply being able to put a smile on someone else’s face. Thus, when we first walked into the room to meet our mentees, it appeared to me that both classes just awkwardly stood their for a while just looking at each others apprehensive facial expressions. Then one teacher called out “Okay guys just introduce yourselves to someone and make friends.” With that said, everyone began to socialize with one another. I, still confused and nervous, just stood their for a few moments just thinking who am I going to mentor? Then, with some encouragement from my friend, went up to a girl in front of me to simply get to know her. Her name was Rebecca. Rebecca and I instantly clicked. She was a sweet, enthusiastic, and funny girl with a strong passion for cooking and baking. We spoke about all the foods she’s made as well as her experiences in the culinary class. We even shared a few laughs about my lack of cooking skills. By the end of the class, a friend from my class needed a mentee and decided to join Rebecca and I. Now that the three of us have been placed together for the rest of the semester, we will get the opportunity to get to know each other, learn from each other and grow from each others experiences. I’m excited to see what this mentor-mentee relationship will bring about for I have truly enjoyed my trip to Port Richmond High School. 🙂

Reunification of Families on Staten Island

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This past Thursday, October 1st, Wagner College held a seminar titled “Transnational Families: Staten Island and San Jeronimo de Puebla.” This was a touching event in which families shared their emotionally moving stories of being reunited with each other after ten, fifteen, or even twenty years of being apart. This project allows the family members of the families left in Mexico to come to America for a week or more to be reunited with the family for a short period of time. The family members coming from Mexico had to learn a dance in order to come to the United States and the family members here in America worked hard for a year, attending meetings, in order to make the reunification possible.

The first speaker spoke about how the world now is not the way it should be and that nothing can be changed by just building giant walls between two countries. He emphasized that young people are the ones that must make the change in the world. Following his beautiful words, another family was able to tell their story of being reunited. A mom and daughter gave a beautiful statement on what it was like to be away from each other for such a long time and how great it felt to be reunited. When the mom came to America she left her three daughters behind (ages 4, 5, and 8) in Mexico and tried to do everything to be able to make them happy even though she was so far away. She talked about how difficult it was to come to somewhere where she did not know the language and did not know anyone here. Following her words, her daughter spoke about how wonderful it was to see her mom after so many years. Her mom left when she was four years old and now she is nineteen. She continued to say how she was raised by her grandmother and the only relationship she had was through photos and telephone calls. Thanks to her mom coming here she was able to get an education and was able to pay for her college. This would not have been possible if her mom wasn’t working in the United States and although it is very difficult there are some positive outcomes of it.

The rest of these immigrant’s stories are very similar. They all touched my heart in a special way because I realized how hard it must be for these people to be able to stay in the United States without having their families around.

The families that were reunited through the "Nani Migrante" project.

The families that were reunited through the “Nani Migrante” project.

Personally this event touched my heart because at the age of 19, my mom left her entire family in Poland in order to come to America to work and create a life here for herself. After a long twelve years she was finally able to be reunited with her family. The stories my sisters and I have heard from her are almost identical to those told by these Mexican families on Thursday evening. They all came here not knowing the language, worked hard in order to support their families back home but most importantly they left the people they loved the most back in their home countries. This inspires me because I know how much dedication and work my mom put in into being who she is today. She came with nothing many years back and now has created something of herself. This was only possible through the endless hard work she put in and the mindset she had of achieving her dreams. I think we can all learn from immigrants today because most of them come not knowing anyone in the United States and not knowing the language but through believing in themselves their dreams become a reality in this beautiful country.

San Gennaro

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Two weekends ago I visited the San-Gennaro feast in Little Italy, New York. This experience made me see a whole different culture by just walking through a street in the city. The feast is originally from Naples, Italy and was brought here by the immigrants in the 1920s. This tradition has stayed with the city ever since and is held every year and will continue to be celebrated for many more. Those immigrants had made a tradition that has stuck for almost a hundred years and that is a powerful thing to me. Tradition is the key to every culture and is the key to keeping the culture alive.

Walking through the feast with all the food stands lined up and all the restaurants packed made me hungry beyond belief. The aromas that came from the restaurants filled the air and may have been what attracted the thousands of people that attended. Once i sat down and took that first bite of my pollo de marsala i could not be happier. Next to the chicken came fried mash potatoes which i will never forget the taste of. This dish is a nineteenth century Italian American dish that is famous in the United States. I recommend that all attend the San Gennaro feast if possible!

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A Shocking Reality

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Prior to watching A Place at the Table, participating in class discussions and visiting the neighborhood of Port Richmond, I didn’t realize the magnitude of the struggles faced by residents of food deserts. A food desert is defined as an area that lacks adequate access to affordable and quality fresh food items. These areas lack supermarkets and places where fresh fruits, vegetables and meats can be purchased. Instead, these neighborhoods are filled with fast food restaurants and bodegas, where a bag of chips or cookies can be easily bought in volume for an inexpensive price.

After watching A Place at the Table, I was left speechless. It is heart-wrenching to see what these families go through on a daily basis. I find it unfathomable that people in this country could possible go hungry, considering the over-production of food and amount of waste. A common problem that many families in the film face is known as “food insecure.” When you are food insecure, you do not know where your next meal will come from, if there even is a next meal. That is extremely frightening! When food is easily accessible, it is typically of poor quality. As stated in the documentary, the price of fresh fruits and vegetables has risen by 40% since 1980, while the price of processed foods has declined by 40%. The significant shift in price levels undoubtedly affected food choice. Low income families are forced to choose quantity over quality. Expensive produce and meats are sacrificed for chips, canned foods, cookies and anything else that will give more for less. Unfortunately, the end result is a higher incidence of obesity, diabetes, and lifelong health struggles.

As we took a tour of Port Richmond, I couldn’t help but notice the lack of supermarkets as compared to my own neighborhood, which seems to have too many. I did observe one, but it was destroyed in a fire and there is no immediate intention to rebuild it. That leaves the residents in this neighborhood without easy access. In order to shop in a large supermarket, the residents will have to find a means to travel outside of their neighborhood. There is a market located on Port Richmond Avenue that sells fresh produce, but sadly that was the only one that I saw. Fast food restaurants, however, are plentiful.

Watching the documentary and visiting Port Richmond afforded me the opportunity to see, first-hand, the problems facing our local communities. I didn’t realize these very real struggles existed so close to home.

A World Without Sunday Dinner

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We really don’t think about how many things we take for granted in this world nowadays, especially food. After watching “A Place at the Table” it really opened up a new light for me in terms of food deserts across the country. For instance, when you think about Sunday dinner it doesn’t seem as a big deal to you. You value food as an every day privilege as expected three times a day; however, imagine your life consisting of consuming three bags of potato chips a day and that being the source of your daily nutrition. The problem across the country today is that many people are ashamed of acknowledging this problem, along with our government. They constantly talk about trying to resolve this problem but never really seem to make such difference.

As stated in the documentary, across the country today, one of out every six Americans say that they don’t have enough to eat. Along with this issue many families are food insecure, which means that they don’t know when their next meal is coming. Can you envision waking up everyday hoping and praying that you will be able to put some sort of food on the table for your children? This is an underlying problem especially in Mississippi. When I first heard that this state holds the highest obesity rate as well as well as has the highest food insecurity in America I was surprised. I thought to myself how could that be? I soon learned that this is occurring because a lot of residents in Mississippi don’t make enough money to buy healthy foods, therefore they have to resort to junk food such as donuts and chips. The price of healthy foods has gone up about 40% since 1980, which is why it’s so hard to acquire nowadays especially for people who receive a small salary. Throughout the years, while the price of healthy foods boosted up, the price of processed foods shot down about 40%. One of the primary reasons for this and the growing rate of obesity is the farm policy that we run by – which indicates what we subsidize and what we don’t subsidize. All of the natural and healthy options that are laid out in the supermarkets are all subsidized while the junk food that’s now sold at almost every deli, gas station, and supermarket is unsubsidized. The 23.5 million Americans that live in food deserts nowadays just eat what’s available to them, which is ultimately not much. Since these low-income families have to resort to eating junk food due to the unavailability and high costs of healthy food, obesity continues to grow. The government has set up a food stamp policy across the nation that is based on your total income. Even though food stamps may help a family for the first week or two of the month, they cant be the consistent source of food that’s needed for a family of at least 4. A very large issue with food stamps that a woman experienced in the movie was that as soon as she started to make some money that was above the maximum salary needed to receive food stamps, she could barely put any food on the table for her kids. The problem is, is that it’s a lose-lose situation nowadays. Either you don’t have a high paying job and receive food stamps that put some sort of food on the table, or you get a job that no longer qualifies you for food stamps which poses an even bigger struggle when acquiring food. I believe that one of possible solutions that should be more addressed would be to lower the cost of these healthy and nutritional options rather than just implementing supermarkets in these food deserts. Just because the healthy and nutritional options all of a sudden become available doesn’t mean that these residents can purchase them or are willing to change their eating habits. The government should start more programs that will provide and distribute free healthy food options to those in need. After watching this movie I became much more intrigued with the subject and hope to learn more about it throughout the semester.

Port Richmond Tour

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On Thursday, our class went on a tour of Port Richmond. We got to walk around the neighborhood and go into all different types of grocery stores and restaurants. Culture has a huge impact on this neighborhood and it is very different then my own culture so I was very intrigued by it. Port Richmond is filled with a variety of restuarants including Mexican, Chinese and even Peruvian. At the begining of the tour, our tour guide asked the class to count all the restaurants we saw. I couldn’t even keep count because there was just so many and I was too busy trying to learn about all of them. At the end of the tour we were able to stay and eat guac and chips inside a small Mexican restaurant with the class. The guac was made right then and there, it was so refreshing after all the walking we did outside in the sun. People in this town take there culture very seriously and it made me realize how diverse all cultures really are.

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During the tour, we entered a local market filled with fruits and vegetables and other foods I had never seen before. The store provided all sorts of foods, one being a mexican cactus plant called Nopal. Nopal is a common ingredient in numerous Mexican cuisine dishes.This was a very important ingredient in New Mexican cuisine. As I looked around the store, I was overwhelmed with all the different fruits and vegetables I had never seen before, but I was so curious to find out what they were. I really enjoyed this tour and I am happy I got to  see what this town provided. Wagner College is only a short distance from Port Richmond and I feel it was important that my class go to experience this and see how diverse culture really is.

 

 

 

Food Deserts Are Everywhere

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Food deserts are something I never really thought was a problem, but after witnessing and learning about how it effects everyone in the community, it is more then just a community problem. Food deserts are most common in low income and low access communities. The USDA found out that there are nearly 23.5 million people in the US are living in food deserts and more then half of them are apart of low income families. To be considered living in a food desert you have to be more then 10 miles away from available and afordable fresh fruits and vegetables. The price of fresh fruits and vegetables in local markets or grocery stores are not cheap, instead of buying a bunch of grapes for $3 why not buy a bag of chips for only 50 cents. However, some people do not even have a choice, they can only buy those bags of chips or cookies. But with food deserts becoming more common and it being harder for families to get fresh foods it is challenging to keep a healthy diet. Not being able to afford or get to fresh fruits or vegetables caused the obesity rate to double in the past 20 years. The USDA is always trying to find new and healthy eating habits to lower the obesity rate in america but with food deserts becoming more frequent it is more challenging to have everyone try to follow their guide lines to a healthy diet.

Touring Port Richmond over the week made me see and notice things I would never get to see. There was one store that was completely empty that used to be a supermarket that now closed down. Even though there are a lot other supermarkets and farmers markets on the block that is just the first of many to close down. Instead of opening more farmer markets or grocery stores that provide fresh foods I also noticed that more and more chain fast food restaurants have been opening, in Staten Island especially there is a fast food restaurant on almost every other block. When I was on vacation this summer in Aruba, we had to pass the towns where the locals lived to get to our hotel. The airport was on the opposite end of the island so we had to drive through almost the whole island which is only 20 miles long. On the way to the hotel I noticed there was not a lot of grocery stores or farmers markets, I only saw about 3 or 4 farmers markets and 2 local grocery stores that sold fresh food. Even in Aruba there is fast food chains everywhere rather then more grocery stores.

In 2008, New York’s Mayor Bloomberg opened up the idea of Green Carts to help put an end to New York’s food deserts.The Green Cart is a stand on a sidewalk corner that only sells fresh fruits and vegetables in places with little access to them. Most of the costumers that shop at the green carts are from low income families that make under $25,000 a year. Since Mayor Bloomberg established the Green Cart over 500 permits have been issued to owners running Green Carts in New York. 350 opened in the Bronx and Brooklyn, 150 in Manhattan, 100 in Queens and 50 in Staten Island. Since the Greens Carts opened there has been a 71% report increased consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables.

Food Deserts

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After visiting Port Richmond and watching the film “A Place at the Table”, I have realized that food deserts are present through out the nation and the inhabitants that live there face many issues. It is devastating that people do not have enough money in order to purchase food for their families and when they do they must travel long distances to super markets. Many low income communities only have bodegas and little grocery stores that do not offer many selections.

In the film “A Place at the Table,” it was not shocking that obesity and hunger are closely related because when one does not have a lot of money to spend on food it minimizes their choices to food that is cheap. Normally the cheap options for food are processed foods like chips, cookies , canned and boxed food. It is hard for a person on a budget to buy fruits,vegetables and meats because they are expensive and do not last long. This is the reason why people begin to eat high calorie foods because it might suppress their hunger longer.

While walking through Port Richmond I noticed there was no super market. I soon found out the one there had burned down and was never replaced. This is surprising because all of the people in this community have been either buying their food at local stores or traveling to other communities. The one local store we walked into did have a variety of fruits and vegetables and also a smaller selection of meat. But as we walked forward I noticed it was one of the only stores that sold such a variety because the strip in Port Richmond was only a few blocks long.

I feel that I have learned that food should be more valued by people in the United States because there are many people that are starving throughout our nation and need our help.

Port Richmond Tour

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On Thursday, our class visited Port Richmond. Even though, I have lived in New York all my life, I’ve never visited Port Richmond and actually walked around the neighborhood. This class visit introduced me to a neighborhood intertwined with its culture. One of the “challenges” we had received at the start of the tour was to keep track of the number of restaurants we would pass by throughout the avenue. I had officially lost count of the amount once we had20150917_121633-1 completed the tour. It wasn’t until I had physically noticed the number of different restaurants that I realized how rich in food culture this neighborhood really was. It also made me realize how truly diverse it was. There were multiple Peruvian, Mexican, and Chinese restaurants. There was even an Irish pub and a gourmet shop (that had just opened) we first passed through.

One particular store that stood out for me was the local market. It reminded me of the movie we had watched and what we had discussed in our class regarding food deserts. Many neighborhoods across the United States don’t have shops that offer a variety of fruits, vegetables, and other nutritious types of food. It showed me how important food choices really are. I had noticed that this shop was pretty much overflowing with fresh fruits and vegetables. The shop also served different types of fruits that I had never even tried before. Another thing I had noticed was the décor. It represented the culture and gave a welcoming atmosphere. At one point, our guide spoke about the neighborhoods presence and the scents of South America. Although I have not been to South America, it seems welcoming to know that people found something familiar and that it reminded them of home.