La Semilla Food Center
La Semilla Food Center’s (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 work through food access, education, and community-based economic development, focusing on getting food and farm-based resources and capital to communities. 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. New Mexico prides itself on our people and the rich traditions they bring to our communities. At the same time, 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 with support from site supervisors, community, and state staff.
Preferred Qualifications
La Semilla Food Center works in partnership with many great organizations in our region, however, La Semilla’s unique programming offers a whole systems approach to creating a more fair, self-reliant food system. For this reason, we are able to offer resources and opportunities to Food Corps service members with a wide range of interests including farming, small business development, youth education from K-12, policy, and others. Therefore, we view Food Corps service as an opportunity to provide valuable training, travel, connection and expertise to individuals in our community who might not otherwise have access to this type of unique experience.
- An interest in gardening, working with youth, nutrition, cooking, etc.
- Prior experience in these are not required
- Able to communicate in Spanish
- Have grown up in this area or have demonstrated a commitment to the community
We hope that a year of service with Food Corps at La Semilla Food Center will open doors to individuals in our community and give them resources to further pursue their interests.
-
Interested in serving in La Semilla Food Center? Contact Tatyana at
tatyana.trujillo@foodcorps.org -
Interested in partnering with FoodCorps? Contact Alicia at
alicia.chavez@foodcorps.org
La Semilla Food Center’s (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 work through food access, education, and community-based economic development, focusing on getting food and farm-based resources and capital to communities. 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. New Mexico prides itself on our people and the rich traditions they bring to our communities. At the same time, 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 with support from site supervisors, community, and state staff.
Preferred Qualifications
La Semilla Food Center works in partnership with many great organizations in our region, however, La Semilla’s unique programming offers a whole systems approach to creating a more fair, self-reliant food system. For this reason, we are able to offer resources and opportunities to Food Corps service members with a wide range of interests including farming, small business development, youth education from K-12, policy, and others. Therefore, we view Food Corps service as an opportunity to provide valuable training, travel, connection and expertise to individuals in our community who might not otherwise have access to this type of unique experience.
- An interest in gardening, working with youth, nutrition, cooking, etc.
- Prior experience in these are not required
- Able to communicate in Spanish
- Have grown up in this area or have demonstrated a commitment to the community
We hope that a year of service with Food Corps at La Semilla Food Center will open doors to individuals in our community and give them resources to further pursue their interests.
-
Interested in serving in La Semilla Food Center? Contact Tatyana at
tatyana.trujillo@foodcorps.org -
Interested in partnering with FoodCorps? Contact Alicia at
alicia.chavez@foodcorps.org