Jesse Anderson

Jesse Anderson is a Food Studies major at the University of Arizona. She is originally from Topeka, Kansas, and has lived in Tucson for the past 7 years. After 20 years as a classically trained chef working in a variety of hotels and restaurants, she is now a mother of two working to merge a critical food studies framework with her extensive work in the food industry to foster local, sustainable alternative food economies. The overarching goal of this project is to develop a foundation for local, self-sustaining, school-neighborhood garden markets run via collaborations between Tucson preschool and elementary schools and their surrounding communities. The CRFS award will be used to fund the preparation of several school-neighborhood garden markets operated by students at two Tucson pre-K/elementary schools in collaboration with local non-

profit food justice organizations and community members. The goal of these activities is to provide a catalyst for tradition-building community events centered around food and culinary arts, such as regularly occurring, self-sustaining, student-led school-neighborhood garden markets and food-centered events that the communities surrounding these schools can proliferate well beyond the lifespan of this initial project.