Jordan Galloway

Over the summer of 2024, I partnered with Urban Roots MN, a youth development organizationon Saint Paul’s east side. Urban Roots has three programs that collectively employ dozens of youth every summer: Cook Fresh, Market Garden, and Conservation. Through these programs youth learn cooking skills, job skills, science, history, and hold discussions on modern and historic issues. Urban Roots provides free trees to the east side, services many acres of forest and farmland, and engages with many organizations and volunteers.

For my Chuck Green fellowship, I worked in the Cook Fresh program. I was surprised to work under not only a Macalester alum, but a Chuck Green alum, Astrid Berger. Throughout the summer, I worked on two main projects for the organization while helping out around the office and learning about the various programs.

My first project was an ArcGIS storymap showing Urban Roots’ farm to table food system. This map on the Cook Fresh program webpage chronicled the story of our food as it was seeded, grown, cooked, and eaten within 1.5 miles of our office and kitchen. I thought it was important to show the public the locality of our food system and the interaction between our programs. I also researched and found historical photos to contrast with our farm sites, and incorporated directions links to make volunteer coordination easier.

My second project was a community food map. Saint Paul’s East side is a food desert. With one of the youth from my program, I went out on my bike and cataloged various markets, restaurants, and community gardens to see if they were open, accepted EBT, had fresh produce, and other things like that. I assembled this data and put it on the Urban Roots website.

I deeply enjoyed this experience, and would like to thank my managers: Sairoong Brunner, elly martinez-kukowski, and Astrid Berger. I would also like to thank the other fellows in my cohort, our facilitator Prof. Lisa Mueller, and the entire Urban Roots Staff.