La Semilla Food Centers(LS) mission is to create a fair, sustainable, healthy local food system in the Paso del Norte region of southern New Mexico and El Paso, Texas. We are a social change organization focused on root causes of inequity in the food system and our work happens through programming and policy work. We work through food access, education, and community-based economic development, focusing on getting food and farm-based resources and capital to communities that have historically been divested of those resources. Our programming includes a 14-acre community farm, a mobile farmers market bus, community cooking and gardening education, school-based edible education, food and farm business development and policy advocacy. La Semilla works diligently at identifying young leaders in our community and offering mentorship and leadership development to help their roles grow within our organization and community.

In addition to their role within our Edible Education Program, FoodCorps service members have opportunities to participate in and learn about all of La Semilla’s programs that interest them or align with their career aspirations. These opportunities include healthy food policy, direct food marketing, program development, community health, small-scale diversified vegetable farming, and developing their own farm or food business through La Semilla’s workshops, among others. La Semilla is expanding the focus from classrooms within schools to creating a structure that better supports garden use and observation by everyone in the school. This includes more community work days to help maintain and beautify school gardens. They want to continue to expand school gardens in their traditional model while working with schools to set aside a budget for school gardens. Formally, they were only working with schools with gardens that LS have built, now they are expanding our offerings to any school that has a garden. They will be expanding to more MS next year with their after school curriculum.

The FoodCorps service member at La Semilla is a part of the New Mexico cohort that includes 9 service members across 5 different service sites.

Service sites in New Mexico are located in what has come to be known as the cities of Farmington, Bernalillo, Albuquerque, Las Cruces, and Anthony. We acknowledge and seek to continually honor that all land within the present borders of New Mexico were originally entrusted and stewarded by Indigenous Peoples. Through a journey of cultural humility, we serve at each site with the knowledge that each of these geographical and cultural boundaries have been constructed as a result of unjust historical events. New Mexico prides itself on our population, which consists of a majority of People of Color, and the deep well of cultural assets each ethnic group adds to our communities. As a result of racist ideologies and concurrent policies that have systematically marginalized these populations, New Mexico currently has the lowest quality of life for children and some of highest hunger and poverty rates in the nation. With this historical pretext and a systems change approach as the foundation, service members will engage with children, families and communities to offer food education through a decolonial, equitable, anti-racist lens with support from site supervisors, community, and state staff.