Crossroads, Meatless Mondays

 Crossroads, Inc. is a six month residential program for women transitioning out of prison. The women in the program live in the two Crossroads houses in Claremont while completing the Crossroads curriculum. Both houses have organic gardens, and one of the houses recently created the space to keep a flock of chickens. Crossroads program curriculum is designed to reduce recividism rates and offers such programs like drug/alcohol couseling, job training, life skills, and healthy living. Meatless Mondays is one of the required programs.

The Meatless Mondays program was started by a professor at Scripps College, Nancy Neiman Auerbach, in conjunction with her Political Economy of Food course. Her core belief is that in learning about food justice it was critcal to have her students involved in community engagement projects so that they could apply what they were learning in the classroom to community projects. 

Every Monday student interns from the Claremont Colleges go to the Crossroads house and cook a full course vegetarian dinner for the women. The produce used in the meal is donated from a nearby farm, as well as harvested in Claremont. In planning the menu the students research food blogs, cookbooks, and devise a meal that uses seasonable produce. Each week different women from the Crossroads house help in the two hours of dinner prep, and learn kitchen skills. All twenty-five, women and students, enjoy the meal together and the meal is served family style around two large tables. Following dinner, the students run a two hour food justice workshop. The workshops range from such topics as: pasta making/sauce-off competition, healthy/affordable packed lunches, watching documentaries, and canning. 

Meatless Mondays gives the student interns: broader perspectives on social justice issues, space to take a leadership role in planning workshops, cooking and gardening skills, as well as the chance to build a community outside of the Claremont College campus.