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Iceberg Lettuce Gleaners — International Backgrounds

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A dozen or so students doing a 4-week course in "Global Trade and Development" at the Monterey Institute of International Studies joined the glean. They came to the program from as far away as Kenya, Viet Nam, Malaysia, Palestine, and India. All came through campuses of the United World Colleges, which encourages "international peace, cooperation, and justice." I talked with several of the students and with the program coordinator.

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Download a feature story [ 263KB] Rusten wrote for the Santa Cruz Sentinel about the international students gleaning.

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Rosie Osire originally came from Kenya to the US five years ago to attend the United World College campus in New Mexico. Now she attends Wellesley College, where she'll return for her senior year this fall. Rosie is particularly interested in the Global Trade and Development program because her family lives in a region of Kenya dominated by huge export tea estates. Her father manages an estate for a large company, while her mother is a personal secretary for a rival tea company. Rosie's father also has his own tea farm, and the family helps out with the planting, weeding, and harvesting for sale to Ketepa Tea. Rosie told me a bit about how tea is grown and processed.

Nathiyananthan Muthusamy is an economics undergraduate who grew up in Malaysia, where he worked on his grandparent's vegetable farm whenever he visited, preparing the ground for the chiles and other vegetables his grandfather grew to take to the local street market. Nathiyananthan attended the United World Colleges campus in New Mexico where he worked regularly on a local organic farm as part of a school service program.

Chirag Sabunani just graduated from Northwestern University in Chicago. Like others in the program, he attended a United World College campus for the equivalent of 11th and 12th grades. The campus he attended was in Trieste, Italy. He grew up in India, where his family has run a number of businesses near Mumbai. Chirag told me a bit about how students come together at the United World College and how this gleaning has been a bonding experience for them, "changing the world, one lettuce at a time."

Thanh Ha came to Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, from Viet Nam. She's just graduated and told me about an organic vegetable farm run by the college where she worked during her four years there. The garden provided vegetables for the students on campus and for a soup kitchen in town.

Carolyn Taylor coordinates the program in Global Trade and Development at the Monterey Institute of International Studies. This is the second year she's brought the student on a glean as part of their experience of agriculture in the Monterey Bay area. Carolyn's father grew up on a farm in Michigan. "But I'm the next generation," she says, "where I'm very removed from my food." So gleaning is a chance to reconnect.