Jussara Lee mobilised her creative team to design and produce sustainable gift bags for the ‘Teens for Food Justice Gala Feast’. Teens for Food Justice is a youth led movement that works with Title 1 public schools in inner city New York. It is a food justice movement that galvanizes and trains young people to become urban farmers. Through this program, children from elementary and secondary levels learn to build and maintain indoor hydroponic farms that yield more than 220,000 lbs. of fresh produce annually. These school farms develop student’s science and technology skills, and provide support for the health and nutrition of their low-income communities, in addition to supplying the school’s cafeteria with nourishing vegetables.

The ‘TFFJ Gala Feast’ was held at La Sirena restaurant on November 27th, and was hosted by Mario Batali, in honor of Board Chair Tara Smith. As stalwart supporters of the Slow Food movement, an organization that fights for good, healthy and fair food for all, we wanted to make sure our donation was 100% sustainable. So we decided to make the gift bags out of discarded brown paper bags and leaves. We went around buildings and parks in the area collecting them, reinforced the bags with biodegradable tape and non-toxic glue and reassembled them in the desired shape using a custom pattern. We then took fabric scraps from our custom orders' left overs and hand braided them in colorful mix of hues and textures.

Lastly, to keep the goodie goodie bags spirit going, we asked the attendees to return the bags for further use, and in exchange, offered a $20 off on the mending of any item of clothes they would like to revive. We believe a circular economy is a much more efficient system than the single use, throw away vortex we find ourselves in at the moment.

For more info check out: www.teensforfoodjustice.org

IG: teensforfoodjustice