If you want to learn more about our programs and share the information with your friends and networks, download a copy of the new Food Law and Policy brochure!
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Check out our student, Ona Balkus’s blog post on the Clinical and Pro Bono Office Blog
Student Voices: From Farm to School in Mississippi
Posted on February 13, 2012
A patch of collard greens grows right on the side of the highway, illustrating that they can grow almost anywhere. Most of the greens served in Mississippi school meals are canned and from outside the state!
Today’s dispatch comes from Ona Balkus, a second-year joint degree student at Harvard Law School and Harvard School of Public Health. Ona spent her winter term working with the Mississippi Food Policy Council as part of the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic. She is also a member of the student practice organization the Mississippi Delta Projectand is a student fellow for the Law and Social Change Program of Study. She will be participating in the Food Law and Policy Clinic again for the spring term.
It’s 5:30pm on a Friday and I’m sitting at a small dining room table with six eighth grade girls, a nun, and my friend whom I’m traveling with. The drive into the town where these girls have grown up and live was a bit of a shock, with mostly boarded up stores on the main street, stray dogs on the side of the road, and miles of corn and cotton fields around the small Delta town.
Around the table, we are engaged in serious conversation. “I only like string beans!” “The lunch lady spit in my potatoes today, I swear!” We’re talking about improving school foods, a topic that preoccupies our country and affects these girls every day. The girls like some vegetables, but love fried chicken and cupcakes, and are excited to start a community garden with Sister Kay (the nun who leads this mentorship group) next spring. After talking for an hour about food, cooking, and what they want to be when they grow up (doctors, lawyers, and a cosmetologist), we say our goodbyes and thank them for hosting us at their weekly meeting.
While my winter term assignment is focused on interviewing and learning from school food service staff, farmers, and other food advocates in Mississippi, meeting these girls is just as important for the success of this project. Through the Food Law and Policy Clinic and the Mississippi Delta Project, I’m working to help build a Farm to School movement in Mississippi . . .
Summer Internships in the Food Law and Policy Clinic
The Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic has a limited number of slots available for summer interns. The Food Law and Policy Clinic aims to increase access to healthy foods, prevent diet-related diseases such as obesity and type 2 diabetes, and assist small farmers and producers in participating in food markets. Project areas include assisting with the development and research needs of state and local food policy councils, assessing food safety rules to inform law and policy changes that would increase economic opportunities for small local producers, analyzing and recommending ways to increase access to healthy produce for low-income individuals and those living in “food deserts,” and identifying and breaking down legal and non-legal barriers inhibiting small producers from going beyond direct farm-to-consumer sales to sell at grocery stores, restaurants, and farm to institution programs. Our work is primarily focused at the state and local level, and we have project clients and partners based in different parts of the country.
Over the summer, students will have the opportunity to conduct legal and fact-based research to inform policy recommendations, including drafting fact sheets, in-depth reports, comment letters, testimony, presentations, and legislation or regulatory guidance. The summer program runs from Tuesday, May 29th through Friday, August 3rd, but we have some flexibility with regard to start and end dates as long as summer interns make at least an eight-week commitment.
In addition to the Food Law and Policy Clinic, the other divisions of the Legal Services Center that are accepting summer students are:
- Administrative/Disability Litigation Clinic
- Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation (formerly the Health Law and Policy Clinic)
- Estate Planning Clinic
- Family Law Clinic
- Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) Law Clinic
- Post Foreclosure Eviction Defense Housing Clinic
For more information about the summer program and about these different clinical units, visit http://www.law.harvard.edu/academics/clinical/lsc/student/summer2012.htm.
Interested candidates should send a resume and cover letter to Julie McCormack (jmccorma@law.harvard.edu). Please rank your 3 top choice clinical units when applying.
NOTE: This internship is unpaid, but it is SPIF-eligible for Harvard Law students, and interested candidates are urged to seek separate fellowship or grant funding.
Food Law and Policy Clinic of the Harvard Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation
The Food Law and Policy Clinic is a division of the Harvard Law School Center for Health Law and Policy Innovation that works with nonprofit organizations and government agencies to recommend food laws and policies aimed at increasing access to healthy foods and assisting small farmers and producers in participating in food markets.
The Food Law and Policy Clinic was launched in 2010 with a range of projects working with state and local governmental agencies and nonprofit organizations. We began offering a course, entitled Food: A Health Law and Policy Seminar, in fall 2011 in order to provide law students with the opportunity to learn about the full range of legal and policy issues implicated by today’s food system.
This site will include information on the Food Law and Policy Clinic projects, new, reports, and events.