Highway to Health Festival & Youth Forum

Thank you to everyone for making last Saturday’s Highway to Health Festival and Youth Forum event at P.S. 64 in the Bronx such a success! We had an estimated 600 people attend. It was fabulous to see people of all ages come together to actively engage with the various activities, workshops, booths, demos, food samples, film screenings, and entertainment.  Most importantly, the public and local community really seemed to have both a fun and meaningful time. The eagerness to learn, listen, taste and participate was palpable.

As co-hosts of the day, HealthCorps and the Baum Forum would like to thank all the participants, volunteers, partners, sponsors, HealthCorps Coordinators, and Youth Planning Team for all their hard work in planning and executing such a successful event.

We would love to hear any specific comments or feedback about the festival and forum to make our future events even better. Stay in touch!  Check out more photos from the event at http://www.flickr.com/photos/baumforum/ .

Excitement is building for June 12th!  Confirmations are flying in for exhibits and youth led workshops on food justice/green school roofs/community assessments/sports nutrition, cooking demos and chef-led classes, Teen Iron Chef: Final Battle, Zumba, yoga and meditation, Readnex Poetry Squad, iLL-Literacy, Movie Bites mini festival with screenings and directors, gardening and Chipotle!

GET READY FOR SOME GOOD EATING IN JUNE!

The finalists from the Teen Iron Chef Invitational will be competing at the Highway to Health Festival and Youth Forum on June 12th, and we cannot wait to taste what they’ll come up with!

In the meantime, head on over to the Upper West Side and see what’s cookin’:

Edward A. Reynolds West Side High School Teen Iron Chefs will be having a Showdown to kick off FitTown on the Upper West Side.  On June 8th at 4 PM, two West Side teams will take on an unlikely ingredient to create stunning main dishes.  The Showdown will be hosted by Whole Foods Market and will take place in their cafe, located at Columbus Ave and 97th St.  Come on over, bring your friends, and see what these teenagers can do!

(for more information, contact Sarah Frank at sarah.frank@healthcorps.net.)

The students of DeWitt Clinton High School recently recorded a music video entitled “Make It Better” to promote food awareness and positive change. The video was produced through the assistance of the John Lennon Educational Tour Bus, a nonprofit mobile recording studio that travels the country all year long giving free opportunities to students to write and record original music, produce HD video and professional photography. We hope to see these talented students perform live on June 12th!

At Monroe Academy for Visual Arts & Design, peer mediators are working on a video project to show different perspectives on topics that matter to our school community. We are creating a FitTown in the South Bronx by developing greater love and tolerance for each other — this is the basic work that has to happen before our youth can work together on larger social justice issues that manifest on our campus and in their homes.

Student groups have focused on the concepts of community and peace in order to create videos that will become the basis of classroom discussion scheduled for the end of this year. And we’ll be sharing these videos at the Highway to Health Festival and Youth Forum!

Teen Iron Chefs of JFK High School (Bronx, NY)

Teen Iron Chef is in full force. Through the support of HealthCorps and Family Cook Productions, high school students across New York City are battling out two healthy recipes every week.  Battles have featured mussels provencale versus chicken & broccoli stir fry, Vietnamese spring rolls against Mexican quesadillas, a hearty shrimp jambalaya versus an aromatic Thai fish chowder, and more!

Each team is judged on various criteria such as knife skills, mise en place “everything in its place”, presentation of culture and nutritional background, entertainment value, creativity, and taste. Students are learning how to plan out and prepare delicious healthy recipes from scratch, trying out new ingredients, understanding different cultures, engaging in fierce competition, developing public speaking skills, experiencing shared meals and having tons of fun!

Recently, a select group of Teen Iron Chefs competed in the second annual Teen Iron Chef Invitational in Brooklyn.  Join us on June 12th at the Highway to Health Festival and Youth Forum to watch the winning teams compete in a final battle.  Also, check out other inspiring programs that are engaging youth through the art of cooking, such as C-CAP(Careers through Culinary Arts Program) which was featured in the award-winning documentary “Pressure Cooker”, the Food Bank for NYC’s Cookshop for Teens: EATWISE program, and Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution.

Watch this video to see Teen Iron Chef in action

We are very excited to announce that registration for the June 12 Highway to Health Festival & Youth Forum is now open!

Visit our registration page here, where you can register as a volunteer, attendee, exhibitor or workshop presenter.

The Youth Planning Team for the June 12th Highway to Health Festival & Youth Forum is proud to launch this website for our event which will take place in the Bronx.

The website serves as a portal for learning about the various ways to participate in the June 12th event, a forum for sharing the projects of inspiring people  and organizations dedicated to the health of our communities, and a medium to document the hard work and creative process of planning this event.

Thanks for visiting our site. Feel free to offer feedback, suggestions, or questions about the website or event. Stay connected by also following us on Twitter and Facebook.

Teen Iron Chef @ HealthCorps Gala, 2010