We have to apologize for the lack of communication and updates in the past months. It has been a time of change and reflection. In November we were finishing up our year and had our visioning day for the future of the project. One of goals of last year was to do an cultural map of people and programs that were interested or engaged in teaching the young people about the 'old ways.' The goal of Feasting for Change by the end of year 3 was to have culture camps for young people. Create a place for Elders, Knowledge Keepers and young leaders to come together to share, learn and grow!
We invited many of these groups to our visioning day in November. We came up with some ideas and realized there were not many groups with the capacity around a youth culture camp. One group however came forward with their excellent programs and ideas. This is the Saanich Adult Education Centre - http://www.sisb.bc.ca/saec/.
Feasting for Change has decided to partner with the SAEC for the next 2 years and help broaden their culture camp to more young learners and to utilize thier strong language initatives into the food work. The WSANEC school board has been mentoring and nuturing the SENTOCEN apprentices over the past years. These 5 emerging Language experts are a gift to our work.
The goals for Feasting for Change this year is to:
1) Create 5 SENTOCEN food harvesting and knowledge videos created by the SENTOCEN apprentices and their Elders.
2) Create a Learning Garden - We have been focusing on the young learners that go to school at the WSANEC school board - preschool to adult learners. We have created a 'Learning Garden' there lead by Cara Barter and Earl Claxton Jr.
3) Pit cook site creation on the school grounds - lead by JB Williams and the school is buillding a cob building with an cob overn. :)
4) 4 Feast events - one being the Annaual Cultural Symposium that had over 600 young leaners there this year.
Learning Garden - Events for May with Feasting for Change garden program
Friday May 6: Mother’s day potted tomatoes, 3 elementary school classes, approximately 50 students.
Wednesday May, 11: greenhouse gardening with the high school students, planting seedlings and bed clean-up: approximately 30 students
Wednesday May 18: workshop cancelled due to illness.
Wednesday May 25: planting workshop with the elementary students. 5 classes, planted herbs, melons, potatoes, seeded beans, peas, corn, squash and pumpkin: approx. 65 students.
So we will have 3 more feasts in the fall.
Jen and JB have also created amazing Plant Learing cards. There are 64 plant learning cards being created to use when you are out in nature to learn more about the plants. They have also tried to include the local languages in the cards.
We are also finishing up the local communtiy celebration book. It follows the seasons...
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