Black History Month events educate and engage

Sacramento urban farmer Chanowk Yisrael talked about “transforming the hood for the good” in one of four Black History Month events.

UC ANR held its very first Black History Month Program in February and the series of events were well-attended and enthusiastically received.

The events were organized by Esther Mosase, climate smart educator based in San Diego County; LeChé McGill, Human Resources business partner; and Keith Nathaniel, UCCE director and 4-H advisor in Los Angeles County.

“There were a total of five speakers and an average of 163 participants in each weekly session,” said McGill. “Attendee feedback has been great so far and the planning committee plans to send out a survey to collect more input in the coming week.”

If you attended the live event, the committee would appreciate if you could take five minutes to fill out the evaluation survey. Your feedback helps ANR coordinate more events like this in the future.

If you missed a session, you can watch the recordings. All but one session (session 3) was recorded and posted on the UC ANR YouTube page. The sessions and links are below.

Session 1: Sonia Lewis, founder of ASCRIBE Educational Consulting, spoke about “The Black lived experience is a matter of history.” https://youtu.be/eFJLRnnxp5U

Session 2: Mary Blackburn, UCCE family, consumer sciences, health and nutrition advisor in Alameda County, delivered prose about her journey from working on a farm as a girl in the South to earning her Ph.D. at UC Berkeley. A virtual tour of the National Museum of African American Culture & History was followed by a video and discussion about what happened to all the Black farmers. https://youtu.be/IyuM51UKdAo

Session 3: Sacramento farmer Chanowk Yisrael talked about "The Importance of Food Sovereignty" and led a virtual tour of Yisrael Family Farms.

Session 4: Panel discussion with Black farmers Dennis Hutson, Donald Sherman and Will Smith discussed their challenges, how UCCE has helped them and ways UC ANR could further assist in connecting them with resources. https://youtu.be/VyJxo1dREM0

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