The Caltech Y Social Activism Speaker Series Presents
Michelle Mascarenhas

Michelle Mascarenhas
Taking Back Out Farms and Food

Michelle Mascarenhas is Director of the Community Food Security Project at Occidental College. Over the past five years she has worked with farmers, schools, child-care providers and community based organizations to help develop strategies that benefit farmers and low-income communities. These include Farmers Market salad bars in public schools, a farmer-to-community Market Basket program, and Project GROW which helps develop gardens and other food security strategies for survivors of domestic violence.

Michelle has an M.A. in Urban Planning and a B.A. in History from UCLA with a specialization in Women's Studies. Her graduate thesis 'Just Food' examined how the concepts of sustainable agriculture - especially social justice - played out in practice on small organic and conventional farms in Santa Cruz County. Michelle currently serves as President of the board of directors of the Community Alliance with Family Farmers and is on the steering committee of the California Nutrition Network. She is a founder and steering committee member of GE Free LA, which works to educate and mobilize people in LA on the issue of genetically engineered food. She has been active in labor unions (having worked as a union organize) and in social justice organizations in LA over the past ten years.

'What we eat is largely determined by corporations … but communities are working together to take back control' - Michelle Mascarenhas

The Social Activism Speaker Series is coordinated by the Caltech Y and made possible with the combined support of the Presidents' Office, Graduate Student Council, Student Affairs, Graduate Dean, International Student Programs, The Women's Center, Avery House and Jack and Edith Roberts.