Every Monday after school, Student Village has a Community Day from 4-6pm. This time is dedicated to building our little community through workshops in waste management, food labs, visual arts, working in the garden, and other projects that arise. It’s just two hours a week that are absolutely mandatory for the students to be present at SV.
Let me back up for a second… these kids are ages 13-17, and when they come home from school, they really really really just want to be on their screens. And being a teenager away from home, I can imagine that they want to skype friends and family and reconnect through various media. But the point of Community Day is learning with one another to implement the philosophy of “being green”. It’s also about building life skills and motivating them to be independent, especially in the production and preparation of food.
It’s a growing process. I grew up on Diet Coke and frozen dinners. I introduced myself to whole food when I was 18 and out of my parent’s house. I liked the aesthetic of the food co-op in Denton, TX where I was going to University. I liked weighing my tomatoes and searching for the most beautiful looking bottle of kombucha. More importantly, I liked the way that real food made me feel… but it took me several years to understand balanced nutrition and mindfulness of where my food comes from.
So I don’t expect or kids to be changed overnight. Community day is about planting seeds, literally and metaphorically. We hope (we really really hope) that we can foster a positive mentality about healthy food by having fun.
Mari in Lembongan by Me
Meet Mari. She works as the kitchen manager and meal planner. She is in charge of sourcing and ordering all of our food, preparing healthy snacks for the kids, and planning all the meals. Mari studied nutrition at university and was disappointed with the concept of nutrition that they teach in the academy. She decided to travel to Australia and worked with Bill Mollison learning about permaculture. Eventually she discovered what real nutrition means by investigating the sacred connection that traditional societies have with food, environment and community. She is a wealth of knowledge and puts her whole heart into providing a local, organic, and sustainable menu for the kids.
Mari and her partner Natale (more on this amazing human later) live with the boy residents. Their house has transformed into a Food Lab where we are constantly making homemade snacks, treats, dips, dried foods, and raw deserts. It’s a lot of effort though… especially for something like homemade peanut butter, where a whole batch gets eaten in less than 3 minutes with 8 kids. You know, they just don’t make blenders in Bali like they do in the US. That peanut butter is in there for a loooooong time.
It’s important that the kids know how hard it can be, but also how rewarding it is! This Community Day, we brought them into the Food Lab and we taught them how to make sauerkraut, sourdough bread, dried fruit, and crackers.
Chopping, Drying, & Sauerkrauting by Carol
I can’t even tell you how excited they were when they ate their crackers the next day for an after school snack. They laughed at all of the funny shapes they had made. Someone said, “It’s crazy to think about how you can go to the store and just buy a box of crackers made in a factory. We made all of these by HAND!!!”
Be First to Comment