By Ingabire A
On November tenth we took off from Buffalo to Connecticut for a NESAWG conference. This conference always takes place each year in a different state. You might ask yourself ‘what did we discuss at the conference?’ The concern is food justice. People from different states come together and meet with each other to discuss food system issues.
I was so excited because I’ve never been to Connecticut. So, my co-workers and I took a six hour drive but, it was fun because we talked, laughed and got to know each other more. We didn’t just drive, we had to take a lunch break and also bathroom break.
As we got in Connecticut I was thrilled to see how beautiful the city was. We booked a hotel to stay in so as soon as we got there we went to the hotel, it was a good hotel. We drove six hours as I said but as soon as we got to Connecticut we didn’t rest, we had to get ready to go to our first conference session, which was held in the Hilton building in the evening.
The first conference session we went to was the one they were talking about the people of color. Everybody said their opinions about what they think people of color meant and we had to share ideas of what we thought it meant. I noticed that everyone who attended the conference was really into it and they were eager to learn, and they were also friendly.
My thoughts of what I thought about our first conference session are:
That it doesn’t matter where you are born or your color, what really matters is to accept people around you and know that even though you might be different we are all equal and the same.
We spent forty five minutes in the people of color conference session and after we were done there we went to eat dinner. That was one fancy dinner I had for a while. After that we went to the hotel for the night.
The next conference session we went to in the morning was part of the Youth Track. I can say it was my favorite all five conference sessions I attended. There were youth from different organizations, as well as older people, but we all acted the same. We played games and got to know about each other and our organizations - we all had things in common we connected through food. I was so happy to meet those youth there because we came from different places. Some came from Ithaca NY, some from Brooklyn NY, Connecticut and others from Massachusetts and also Queens NY. It was so fun to find those youth there - we even followed each other on our social media.
At the conference I learnt about food justice, about the wicked problems that our foods go through in general. For more information I would advise you to go to the conference next year it will be held in Baltimore.
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