Cultivating personal and career growth: Christina Nelson’s experience at Garden to Table Silicon Valley
Exploring how food justice looks at an urban education farm.
By Christina Nelson '24
This past summer of 2023, I spent 30 hours a week as an intern for Garden to Table Silicon Valley, an urban education farm in downtown San Jose. I received funding and support through the Sociology Department as part of the College of Arts and Science’s REAL program and from the Ignatian Center as a Jean Donovan Fellow. I am extremely grateful for the chance to engage in impactful community work through the support of Santa Clara University. Around the world, many are seeking to combat a lack of access to safe, healthy, nutritious, culturally appropriate, and affordable food, a social justice issue that is particularly relevant in the Bay Area amid high cost of living and rising economic inequality. I am passionate about food access, justice, education, and health impacts. Interning at Garden to Table, a local nonprofit, gave me insight into an aspect of food justice in the Bay Area and what type of work I would enjoy after graduation.
Food insecurity will not be adequately addressed until we also address the isolating and individualistic lives we lead, disconnected from those around us. Garden to Table provides a space for people to find community, support one another, connect with nature, foster new skills, destress, and go home with free, organic produce and plants. Everyone is invited to participate in programming and harvest at no cost, regardless of age, experience, income, and zip code. Not only are many of us disconnected from one another, but we are also disconnected from the work behind the products we use and consume on a daily basis. Participating in the food-growing process at Garden to Table gave me a greater appreciation for the labor behind every meal and insight into farmworkers' daily realities on large-scale and family farms. In my time at Garden to Table, I have seen kids and adults alike realize the long process their food takes before it reaches their plate, and am not immune to this same recognition myself.
Garden to Table's identity as an education farm drew me in from the start. Their work emphasizes teaching people how to grow, harvest, and cook, providing long-lasting benefits and skills even beyond their time physically at the farm. Beyond working as an educational leader in workshops, programs, and presentations, I have learned so much about gardening, nutrition, and health from other volunteers and my coworkers. I enjoy the amount of creative freedom this role gives me to create curriculum, design signage around the garden, prepare recipes for events with Recovery Cafe and Guadalupe Interim Housing, and even showcase my art in the quarterly art shows. I put my bilingual skills to use, translating programming between English and Spanish, creating presentations for the Community in Action team in Mountain View, teaching kids at various Boys and Girls Clubs about worm composting, and running volunteer sessions and field trips in Spanish. I learn new things each time I visit the garden and know that I will never know enough to stop learning.
Part of what I love most at Garden to Table is that everything is “Grown by the community. For the community.” Investing directly into our community fosters growth, change, empowerment, and connection. Supported by the Jean Donovan Fellowship extension program, I have continued working at the farm 5 hours a week during the academic year. As I look forward to post-grad plans, I hope to remain a part of the Garden to Table community, as they have been a central and formative part of this past year.
You can read more about my experience through my fellowship blog posts and can learn more about Garden to Table.