How NYC Students Saved School Lunch

“They provided me not only with the information [and] the tools, but they empowered me to advocate for myself,” Rivera says.

That information also has to reach adults who can act on it. Wendi Gosliner, a researcher at the University of California’s Nutrition Policy Institute, describes student engagement as “a bridge with food service.” She says cafeteria staff operate within budgets, federal rules and other constraints, so the goal is “to not vilify food services, but rather to collaborate with them.” Part of that work, Koch says, is learning whether a problem can be addressed by cafeteria staff, city officials or at the federal level.

This kind of student advocacy work can also produce something less visible than a revised menu. Koch, who worked on the Lunch 4 Learning campaign to bring universal free school lunch to all public school students in NYC, has watched young advocates testify at City Hall and describes it as “incredibly moving.”

“They are having a voice in creating the policies that will impact not only their lives, but also the lives of all of the other students now and into the future,” she says.

Through YFA, young people work together to develop the leadership, research and communication skills required to advocate for systemic change. Credit: Community Food Advocates

Iyeshima Harris-Ouedraogo remembers how empowering such an experience can be. As a teenager involved in Lunch 4 Learning, she testified at City Hall. After one hearing, her group met then-Mayor Bill de Blasio, who told the students he supported universal meals. “I thought that was amazing,” she says.

The encounter made government feel more accessible to her. Citywide universal free school meals followed in 2017.

Years later, Harris-Ouedraogo says the relationships she began building through student advocacy still shape her work. Now executive director of Green Guerillas, a community garden advocacy organization, she sometimes engages with public officials she first met through organizing as a young person — a familiarity she says can carry across years and campaigns.

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Rivera also later worked at Green Guerillas, teaching and facilitating civic engagement with community gardeners, and has testified at a city budget hearing. “Encouraging others to advocate for themselves and advocate for what they deserve is important and rewarding,” she says. “YFA opened that door for me, and I have been pursuing it ever since.” After she left Midwood, her younger siblings attended the same school and used its enhanced cafeteria. They found lunch more enjoyable.

Now 22, Rivera has a simple message for high schoolers. “We usually think that nobody’s gonna listen to us. But … just because you’re a young person doesn’t mean that you automatically don’t have ideas or they’re not valid.”

Scrolling photos courtesy of Community Food Advocates.