“There was always this moment where it was like, ‘Great, we’ve been able to establish a culture and an understanding of how important it is to know where your food comes from and cook it,'” says Richter, who says ESY-NOLA works with more than 500 students each year. “And there’s always this regret, because what do they do [after ESY]? Go to a place where their cafeteria food looks like it did five years ago, eating slop. Grow Dat is such an asset, because our students can apply their skills and go even further.”

With an older–if much smaller–pool of students, Grow Dat is aiming to expand teenagers’ food knowledge while teaching even broader lessons about work and collaboration. “A key concept of Grow Dat is that you cannot do social change only in one neighborhood,” says Gilligan. She sees the program’s site at City Park as neutral ground for students, who this year will come from a mix of public and private schools, to learn “to communicate across race and class lines.”

That’s a heady goal, but if Aston Shields, 17, is any indication, Grow Dat may have some luck in meeting it. One of last year’s students–he’s angling to return as a crew leader this year–Shields didn’t start out interested in food. “I was just reading posters on the wall, and stumbled onto [the job listing],” says Shields in an urban drawl, adding that he mostly applied because it was a paid job. For a modest stipend, he learned how to plan and maintain food gardens, wash and prepare vegetables for market and track their sales, and even attended a handful of lectures on food systems at Tulane. “I came here and I was like, ‘Wow, I never even really thought about how people produced our food,'” says Shields. “It was just a whole new world.”

But in addition to being paid for his work, Shields was able to take home fruits and vegetables from plots he was helping tend at the Hollygrove Market and Farm–a special boon to a family living in the Hollygrove neighborhood where, says Shields, the closest thing to a supermarket is a Walgreen’s. “Once Grow Dat gave me fruits and vegetables, [my family] embraced it,” says Shields–even if the end results weren’t exactly what most slow food acolytes might have had in mind. “We had some shiitake mushrooms,” says Shields. “And my momma made sloppy joes with it.”

Photo: Top, Johanna Gilligan packs fava beans with a student from the Grow Dat program in New Orleans, by David Schalliol. Bottom, A young Grow Dat participant, by Andy Cook.

Originally published on Grist