Tag: ACLAMO

Food and Community

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: SPAN 247: Gastropoetica Latinoamericana

Faculty Advisor: Juan Suárez Ontaneda

Field Site: Puentes de Salud, ACLAMO

Praxis Poster: 

SPAN_Group 3_Praxis Poster

 

Further Context:

Over the course of this semester, our class has had the pleasure of working directly with two different community groups as part of our course, Gastropoetics of Latin America. As part of the conclusion of this course, we have put together this Praxis Poster that answers the question of how food has fostered a sense of community this semester in the classroom and working with our community partners. Our overarching answer to this question is that cooking, eating, and talking about food together is a powerful tool for creating long-lasting communities. The first community-engaged learning section of our poster describes our first community partner, Puentes de Salud, which is a nonprofit organization that serves the Latin community in South Philly through medical services, educational programs, and other services that support the health of the community. We have included a photo we took during one of our visits to Puentes of part of the mural in the building’s lobby, which shows a woman grinding corn using traditional tools called a mano and metate. This mural connects with one of the projects we did with Puentes; as smaller groups, we researched and wrote lessons on common ingredients in Latin American foodways, which we then presented to the students at Puentes so together we could learn more about the histories, preparations, and usages of ingredients like the corn mural.

Pictured in the middle of the poster are tostadas, which are one of the many dishes that we were able to collaboratively make with Puentes students during another visit to the partner organization. Through making dishes like tostadas, salsas, and guacamole together, we were able to share memories and recipes that are important to our families and cultures. Preparing food and sharing a meal with our friends at Puentes was a fantastic experience as we were able to connect with the students on a deeper level through these conversations about our commonalities and differences with food and recipes.

Our other community partner this semester was ACLAMO, an organization in Norrisotown focused on supporting the Latinx community through educational programs, medical services, social welfare, and other resources. ACLAMO strives to help the Latinx community to reach their full potential in life. We also had the opportunity to share a meal with the students from ACLAMO, although this time it was Bryn Mawr dining hall food instead of food we made ourselves. Sitting together and sharing a meal still provided the chance to sit together and talk, first about the dining hall food, and then about our broader respective familial foodways and school experiences.

The Praxis experience is all about meeting and connecting with community members, which can be intimidating at first, but for us it was made easier by consistently being able to connect with our community partners about food. We all have opinions about food, whether it’s certain ingredients we don’t like or specific ways our family cooks a well-known dish. Because of this commonality, we have found that it is always possible to strike up a lively conversation with someone about these opinions and in doing so, share something about our cultures and connect more deeply with one another. Overall, cooking and eating together create community as a way to share our cultures and learn about new cultures and foodways in a way that is fulfilling and meaningful.

Food and Community

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: SPAN 247: Gastropoetica Latinoamericana

Faculty Advisor: Juan Suarez Ontaneda

Field Site: Puentes de Salud, ACLAMO

Praxis Poster: 

SPAN_Praxis Poster Presentation group 4 Revised

 

Further Context:

For our course this semester, we partnered with Puentes de Salud, a non-profit organization that provides health care and afterschool services for the Latinx community of South Philadelphia. We also worked with ACLAMO, another non-profit organization that offers bilingual resources to address the gaps in accessibility for Latinx youth. Over the semester we participated in two meetings with the students at Puentes and one with the members of ACLAMO.

During our first meeting with Puentes, we created activities and infographics for the students with the various products we had discussed during class. Items like potato, pineapple, beans, corn and coconut were discussed in a cultural, social and historical lens. We discussed how important these items were to our day-to-day life, their role within our Latinx heritage, as well as the way each crop made its way to the Americas. Each student received a zine that consisted of each ingredient and its foodway to the United States. Afterwards, we bonded with the students and decided on our next activity.

Our second meeting consisted of creating accessible recipes that connected us to our culture that the students could recreate at home. As half of our group was from Texas, we decided to make mangonadas, a popular Mexican drink made from mango chunks, mango extract, lime juice, ice, tajin and chamoy. We guided the students through the process and explained why this recipe was significant to us. Many of the students and organizers tried this drink for the first time which was really special for our group to create a sense of community surrounding a common food from our own cultures. Through this process we were able to connect with the students as we shared our favorite dishes and experiences in the kitchen.

Lastly, we met with ACLAMO, their students joined us on campus for a couple activities, a campus tour and dinner! The goal of this meeting was to allow the students to see themselves represented in higher education and show them a realistic view of college. We shared experiences about our dining hall and their cafeteria experiences. And discussed how we would like to see Latin American culture represented in these spaces. We built community with these students by connecting over common foods we loved from our own homes and hoping that dining halls and cafeterias would make more efforts to include all cultures.

It was a very meaningful experience to be able to connect with both the Latin American history we discussed during the class, and the diverse Hispanic population of the city of Philadelphia.

Crating Community through Cooking

Semester: Spring 2025

Praxis Course: SPAN 247: Gastropoetica Latinoamericana

Faculty Advisor: Juan Suárez Ontaneda

Field Site: Puentes de Salud, ACLAMO

Praxis Poster: 

SPAN_Group 1 Poster- Elise, Maya, Karen, Sarah

 

Further Context:

Throughout the semester, our class has learned about the history and significance of food in Latinx communities. From corn, which is an indigenous crop central to Mesoamerican civilizations, to cacao, originally from southern Asia and spread through colonization. We’ve seen how food tells stories of migration, resistance, tradition, and memory. These crops are ingredients in many of today’s Latinx dishes. Just something as simple and essential like the corn tortilla.

As part of our learning, we visited Puentes de Salud, an organization that supports the Latinx immigrant community in Philadelphia. Our class through Praxis and this course created interactive projects to teach teenagers about staple crops like corn, yuca, plantains, quinoa, cacao, potatoes, beans, pineapple, coconut, and aji (chili pepper). We as a class designed fun group activities like drawing, games, and tasty snacks to introduce these ingredients and their cultural roots in a meaningful way.

After our first visit, during a group reflection with Puentes de Salud, we realized the kids were craving more than just activities; they wanted food so the next time, we delivered. Our class was divided into groups, where we each prepared a dish that highlighted one or more of the crops we studied. The food that we made included pico de gallo, guacamole, mangonadas, chocoflan, and tostadas de tinga. Our group picked tostadas de tinga which was a new and fun experience for us since it was our first time cooking together.

We followed a special recipe passed down from Karen’s mom who makes tostadas de tinga at least once every week. It’s a family favorite. We cooked everything in the ECC kitchen beforehand and brought it to Puentes de Salud, along with toppings that include lettuce, sour cream beans and queso cotija. One thing we learned while making it, is that if your tomato sauce comes out too acidic, a little sugar helps balance it out. Everyone was allowed to build their own tostadas. It was a creative and collaborative way to connect over food, allowing each child to make the meal their own. While we were reflecting at the end of this trip, one of the volunteers Lucia shared a memory that was really meaningful. She said that when she first reunited with her mother in the U.S., she saw a small window with the kitchen light on. Inside, her mother stood at the stove with the stove on and a pan of tinga chicken. She hadn’t had tinga since then. The tostadas de tinga brought that memory rushing back to her.

What started as a class praxis project became something deeper. It became a shared experience rooted in tradition, storytelling, and community. Recipes are more than instructions, they’re bridges between generations. They stay with us for life. Cooking and eating together at Puentes de Salud wasn’t just fun, it was healing as well. It was a reminder that food keeps us grounded in our own cultures and how food also opens doors to understanding others. Through tostadas de tinga, we honored Karen’s family recipe, celebrated the kids’ curiosity, and brought someone back to a memory of home. And that? That’s the real power of food.