Pilot Light on Its Bright Future
More excerpts from our conversation with the nonprofit's executive director
Pilot Light on Its Bright Future
This past Monday’s issue of Local Food Forum focused on Pilot Light, the Chicago-based food education nonprofit, and its animated shorts — based on its Food Education Standards — that are currently running in the children’s programming blocks on Chicago public television station WTTW.
Today moves the story forward with more excerpts from my interview with Pilot Light Executive Director Alexandra DeSorbo-Quinn, focusing on other aspects of the organization’s programming as it takes what it’s learned from its COVID-era pivots.
Following the excerpts, there is information about Pilot Light’s annual fundraising gala that takes place on Saturday, November 5.
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Q: Let's shift off the videos a little bit because we want to talk about what else Pilot Light is doing. You wrote about the pivots you had to make during COIVD in your last article for Local Food Forum. But tell us a little bit about what your programming is for this year, because we're not all the way back and schools are struggling to get in-person learning going again.
A: Our team has done an incredible job, in the midst of a lot of ambiguity, of making decisions and in sticking with them… For our teachers and students and families, that decision we made during COVID to move all of our teacher trainings virtual has been a really important direction for us, in the sense that now we're national with our Food Education Fellowship.
We have 22 teachers this year, which includes 11 Chicago teachers and 11 teachers nationwide. Through those teachers, we’re reaching three times the number of students that we reached last year… I think that decision to be virtual made our program more accessible… For teachers, to be running after school to a training, even in Chicago, if they're going from the North Side to the West Side or the South Side, that travel time really impacted participation and applications.
So this move to virtual has opened it up so that we’re for reaching more teachers. We're reaching more students. We can learn through partnerships with teachers and different schools and communities outside of Chicago. We can learn more about our model of integrating food education into the classroom and what that looks like in other types of schools…
Another thing that our teachers are doing, each teacher partners with a community-based organization. They have support from our team in doing this, but it's an opportunity for the teacher in that classroom to take the work they're doing and expand it beyond the walls of the classroom, and to create relevancy around that work, and for the community-based organizations to have the opportunity to connect directly with community members who are passionate about their work.
So just to give you an example, we are working with Green City Market this year, and we have teachers who are going to be provided with stipends that can be used for food from the market, and those stipends are going directly to the farmers…
And then the other thing that our teachers are doing, each one is going to be partnering with chefs and welcoming a chef into their classroom, either virtually or in person depending on what school protocols are. Pilot Light was founded by chefs and their voice is such a huge part of our program. And we know when students and teachers welcome chefs into the classroom, that passion and knowledge of food comes to life in a way that's really unparalleled and exciting.
Think back to when you were in school, and when you had special guests. You can tell just from the kids’ faces and from the stories we've heard from teachers over the years that it's among the most exciting things they do all year. We're really looking forward to seeing those relationships blossom and and also building relationships with some new chefs that we haven't worked with before.
The other big thing that we have going on this fall is our Feed Your Mind 2021 gala on November 5 … We have we have an in-person option this year and a virtual option. So it's a hybrid Gala. The virtual option is free for folks to participate, so I encourage all of your readers to go on and sign up for our Gala and to register. And then if you're attending virtually, you have the option to also order food from one of the chefs who we’re partnering with…
[The in-person gala takes place on November 5 at The Arbory, 2219 West Grand Avenue in Chicago.]
Q: I know your goal is always been able as to have a national impact with the Food Education Standards you initiated a few years ago. But it almost strikes me is an opportunity for reverse engineering. It was chefs who started PIlot Light here in Chicago. But by working with teachers in these other communities, you have an opportunity to identify and connect with chefs all around the country.
A: Yeah, it's funny, absolutely, and we just had a planning conversation around that yesterday. So it's definitely on our radar in terms of partnerships going forward. Initially, we thought we would have started with chefs in terms of partnerships in other cities and the chefs connecting us with schools. But it seems like we are going in the the direction of partnering with teachers first and then doing outreach directly in communities through teachers.
It’s so incredible in the sense of getting to work with restaurants and small businesses throughout the country and in Chicago that are local to students and families. Through that chef partnership, the students can go home and say, We had this chef from whatever restaurant down the street, let's go there right now. We had, for instance, this delicious Filipino food or something, let’s go try that. For students, it’s really exciting to connect them to those businesses and resources that are around them that they might not already know about.