Our Work
We create spaces that focus on cultivating and nurturing the changemaker/organizer above the impact that they will make in their neighborhood. Our spaces spark remembrance, re-imagination, and response within youth to first examine their relationship to themselves, then the people closest to them, and finally, their neighborhood.
The Neighbors Market
The Neighbors Market is an incubator to understand the food needs of North Shore neighborhoods and street corners and to radically imagine long-term and sustainable solutions. This pop-up seasonal market takes place in food hubs across the North Shore in neighborhoods that face extreme food injustice. Our markets provide access to fresh and culturally-diverse produce from our garden bed; cooking demonstrations for low-cost, seasonal, and healthy meals; and gardening and seed demonstrations.
Community Organizing
Bi-annual Community-based Projects: At the end of the Forgotten Foods fellowship and FFAY Internship, the Forgotten Foods team leverages youth participatory action research to identify a 1-2 year long community organizing problem that addresses the root cause issues of food access in Staten Island. Former fellows and interns, who are trained in community organizing skills, are onboarded as project coordinators and managers and added into the organization’s base. Together, youth and young adults wage campaigns to transform Staten Island’s food systems, neighborhood spaces, and culture.
In 2024, youth-centered their campaign efforts on making Stapleton’s green and open spaces more accessible and welcoming to its residents. The group is currently working on launching a campaign to repair Hill Street Garden, a local garden located on the North Shore. The Forgotten Foods team is collaborating with Hill Street to repair the garden’s internal structures, policies, and physical layout to make it more accessible, inclusive, and welcoming to the surrounding community. They plan to extend this campaign to include advocating for the redesign of Tappen Park based on community feedback and participation.
