Today we’d like to introduce you to Kristin Ritzau.
Alright, so thank you so much for sharing your story and insight with our readers. To kick things off, can you tell us a bit about how you got started?
For the past thirteen years, I have been growing food, raising chickens, and composting in Monrovia. I did not grow up doing this sort of work, but during these years a more sustainable life became a passion for me and my family. I ended up going back to school almost ten years ago and received my PhD after studying female farmers around the US. For a while, I was a faculty member and ran a small farm at California Lutheran University. Simultaneously, in 2019 I helped found our community’s first community garden and it sparked a deep excitement for more neighborhood engagement and action around food, sustainability, equity, and education. Schools started reaching out and I decided to take a big leap of faith in early 2020 to found a nonprofit that would reimagine garden and food science in the San Gabriel Valley. We filed the paperwork March 1, 2020 for Food Exploration and Discovery (Food ED) after establishing a few partnerships in Monrovia. Then, well, we all know what happened. I didn’t know if I had just quit my job and lost everything. But over the summer of 2020, elementary schools started reaching out asking if we could do an online garden science program. A local middle school wanted to build an educational pollinator garden.
By August 2020, my colleague and I were partnering with four schools. 2020 was hard, but it had a silver lining for us, we were able to build a distinct STEAM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math) garden program with direct connections to our local community. We provided a custom parks map so kids could explore local plants and pollinator insects and birds in their neighborhoods. We built a pollinator habitat that now welcomes songbirds and butterflies into school surrounded by industrial factories and the metro. At another school, we build a brand new vegetable garden using reclaimed pine from one of the fires this past year and are looking forward to being in person with students in the space next year. Overall, we could not be more grateful for our community that came together in this time to help us launch and grow. We are excited about what the future holds for garden and food science – championing outdoor education and helping students and teachers see their gardens as robust places of learning. Our program is hopefully launching a full K-12 program next year where we can pilot even more programs and ideas with a wide variety of ages and, again, we are excited for what the future holds.
Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Obviously, 2020 was full of struggles for so many. And while our nonprofit grew slowly, it was also hard to start something new in this season too. Rallying support in our community when you can’t be in person was a challenge. We had to get very creative. Even now, we are doing fundraisers and applying for every grant we qualify for to make sure our programs are supported. Every month for the past year and a half has been one pivot after another. We had to do a lot of the actual building and planting work with just two of us with our families in tow due to not being able to have volunteers or workdays during the LA County Covid-19 surge. But we did it! However, all of this was not without loss, my employee lost his dad to Covid-19 in February. I haven’t seen my parents in almost two years (they live out of state and have health conditions). It’s been difficult to only share our work online and not be with students in person. So we are hopeful now that we can have volunteer days again and see people in person. We even got to pull carrots and pick snap peas with the students at one of our partner schools as school came to a close.
Appreciate you sharing that. What else should we know about what you do?
Our mission is to reimagine garden and food science education in San Gabriel Valley. We create programs that utilize gardens to inspire community building, problem-solving and stewardship rather than just growing food. We want to integrate holistic learning and STEAM education as well as innovative entrepreneurship programs in a dynamic way across K-12 education. We have big goals and dreams for our community. What sets us apart is that we are building programs for students to entertain sustainability careers and pathways across different ability levels and grades. Gardens are so much more than spaces to grow food. We are proud our gardens are ADA accessible, introduce aspects of food justice and heritage cuisines, and bring new lenses to outdoor education that can be utilized year-round. Often school gardens are championed by one teacher or parent for a couple of months of the year, but what if you had a community partner who could help maintain and guide the use of the space so an entire ecosystem of learning and engagement could thrive? We are proud to see the beginning of this foundation flourish and with more support, we will be able to expand our programs in surrounding LA County communities.
Is there anyone you’d like to thank or give credit to?
Food ED would not be what is it without our Community Initiatives & Program Director – Giangelo Leos. “Gio,” as he is known, is a champion for sustainable and just ecosystems. He is passionate about gardening, herpetology, pollinators and beetles, and all things trees, plants, and soil. He is known to give his number out to any neighbor to help with gardening issues and continues to be a lifelong learner to better our climate and community. Our spouses Nate (Kristin’s husband) and Amanda (Gio’s wife) have also been our biggest cheerleaders, supporters, and number one volunteers, ever patient with ongoing builds, crazy hours, and so many text conversations. Kristin’s kids, Thatcher (8) and Shep (4) are all in on the family business, too, helping identify birds, move soil, and plant seeds. We were introduced to Claire Robinson and her team at Amigos de Los Rios who have partnered with us on a couple of projects. Their work is amazing and we are grateful to work with them alongside Monrovia Unified School District! Our partner schools are not just partners, but friends: Santa Fe Computer Magnet School, Plymouth Elementary, Bradoaks Elementary Science Academy, and Monroe Elementary have great administrators and teachers spearheading exciting educational initiatives with us. We are proud to launch in the City of Monrovia where we will launch a city park pollinator education program later this summer.
To see a community embrace this type of education and nurture it is just incredible. We also have an outstanding board of directors, Judy Gomez is a Retired Deputy Director of Nutrition Services at WIC who now is a Master Gardener and Cal Naturalist. Her passion for gardening and science is amazing. Chaili Trentham provides her encouragement and leadership development skills. Lastly, Michael Martinez, the Founder and Executive Director of LA Compost has been invaluable with his advice on sustainability and starting a nonprofit. The cheesy saying, “Teamwork makes the dream work” could not be more true with this group. They have been on call for late night Zoom board meetings, helping us get supplies and championing our support network. We are so grateful and could not do this work without this team. Our support in the community continues to grow as well. Scout troops are volunteering with us. We have a home team list of volunteers including local high schoolers who have been an amazing help. It’s neat to see people reemerging and wanting to make their community a better and more sustainable place.
Contact Info:
- Email: [email protected]
- Website: explorefooded.org
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/explorefooded/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/explorefoodED/
