SYB YOUTH PROGRAM BY 1 FREEDOM FOR ALL

1Freedom Launches Inaugural Summer Youth Brigade


1Freedom — in collaboration with a collective of organizers, organizations and community members in the Bronx, Harlem and Washington Heights — is launching a summer youth education and organizing program, Summer Youth Brigade (SYB). SYB creates an educational platform where youth learn to take the lead in the movement for food justice. 


1Freedom will hire 15 youth organizers to operate a “mutual aid” program providing free groceries to communities in Uptown Manhattan and the Bronx via “Solidarity Fridges”. Participants will be compensated at a rate of $20/hour for twenty (20) hours of work per week. SYB participants will become organizers in their communities and will explore the fight for systemic change in the NYC food system. In order to successfully (and safely) run this program, 1Freedom has built a network to provide SYB organizers with mentorship, support, training, and education during the program. This four-week pilot program will start on August 6th and run through August 31st.


The vision of this community-supported, youth-led, program is as follows: 


1. Mutual aid: approximately fifteen (1-3) refrigerators will be purchased, decorated, and placed on the street which will be open and available to anyone who needs food. SYB organizers will restock and maintain these “solidarity fridges,” located in their community.

2. Youth-led Organizing: Youth will build and cultivate community relationships necessary to support and operate “solidarity fridges” in their neighborhoods, with partners (like tenants associations, urban gardens, restaurants, nonprofits and local organizations).

3. Popular Education: 1Freedom will provide the platform and support for SYB organizers to ask questions, investigate, and present their findings around issues they see in the NYC food system and in their lives. SYB organizers will participate in skills-based workshops, discussions around systematic oppression in our food system, and study the central role of food in social movements in resisting and reimagining our society.