OUR STORy: Jardin ollin
“The Food as Medicine project is about treating food not just as fuel, but as a powerful tool for health and healing”. – Joe
Our Origins…
Joe Garcia, I am of Chicano ancestry from New Mexico, USA. I have been working in Transformative Learning since 1991 in after school programs, high schools, colleges, and community learning spaces. I have an MA degree in Culture, Ecology, and Sustainable Communities from New College of California in San Francisco and a BS in Crop Science from California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo. I found that by asking a life changing question, “what should I do in my life?” I became a curious explorer and designer in my own learning, being, and doing. Inspired by the art and science of horticulture, I started to volunteer, I enrolled in community college, I then transferred to the university, I earned a graduate degree. “I learned what I love to do” and that has made the difference in what I currently do for work in my life today. “ I found my purpose!” It was through Ecological Literacy where I learned from plants and the transformative processes in nature that everything is “always becoming.”
What Food as Medicine Means
I feel that the holistic concept of Food as Medicine could be defined by people in so many ways and the ways it can be used is limitless. I would want the person who is new to the concept because it is often the least known, least taught topic to exist in most public schools yet it is the most important learning that a human being should know about and bee able to also do.
My shortest and most simple version of what Food as Medicine is to me is being able to look at food and ecological processes through the lens of our human ancestors. The ability to share what was known that still allows and inspires our very human existence today.
When we remember where we came from, we can use this way of being as a guide of wisdom and tools of ecological knowledge toward a more intentional and regenerative future.
Our Everyday Work
We are always learning and refining, staying adaptable and being fluid like water. Inviting teachers, students and the community to join in on the creative opportunities they would like to share and contribute to the project. Before planning any events or activities, we explored and wrote down our grounding philosophy of “getting the seeds back in the hands of the people” and are now building our events and activities on this foundation.
From idea to now, what’s your journey?
Our beginning at the CCS Jardin Ollin project was planted as a seed of imagination 11 years ago when Dr. Divana Olivas and I would get together when she was an undergraduate student at UNM and during her graduate studies at USC. Our conversations led to explore what is possible and to actualize what we imagined in the physical form of a garden. Receiving the Food as Medicine Grant has been a blessing to us in turning our vision into reality in service to teachers, students and the community,
What Stays With You About Food as Medicine?
I have to say that it has been the amount of diverse opportunities that are now available because of Food as Medicine and our Jardin Ollin project to students and the community. It is just as nature shares what propagation is and what it looks like, that the propagation of ideas and opportunities have been flourishing and are the most inspiring.
What We’re Reaching for
“The creation of more just, ecological and regenerative Chicanx Communities. This vision is what gets us up in the morning, inspired by another opportunity to see and feel it actualize more of itself.”
