Anim Steel: The Real Food Challenge
A campaign co-founded by Anim Steel, the Real Food Challenge’s goal is to re-direct $1 billion of college food purchases away from industry and towards local and sustainable choices. A plenary speaker at the main Bioneers conference, Anim Steel’s talk will be streamed in live to CCB.
Steel is the director of national programs at Boston’s renowned The Food Project. Born in Ghana and growing up in West Africa and D.C., Steel studied at Williams College and received his Master’s in public policy at Harvard.
Starting in 2003, Steel has trained more than 700 youth in leading a movement across the country to promote fair food systems. He has succeeded in creating a network of over 5,000 activists and farmers in the U.S. The goal of The Food Project is to instigate personal and social change by way of sustainable agriculture. Currently, 100 Boston teenagers are employed by the project. They grow, sell, and donate around 250,000 pounds of organic produce.
Caroline Ginsberg, Coordinator for GleanSLO and a featured speaker at the Central Coast Bioneers Conference on The Future of Food, believes Steel’s talk will inspire us to promote not just school gardens, but to involve students and all of the community to move toward sustainable food systems. A new program that is part of the SLO Food Bank, GleanSLO is an effort uniting farmers, health advocates, food providers, and community volunteers in harvesting and donating produce gleanings to the SLO food system and those in need.
