Meet Our Harvest Day Special Guests! Hilary Baum, Christina Grace, Michael Hurwitz, Ian Marvey!

While our Harvest Day Celebration's outdoor activities have been moved to Monday (due to lousy weather tomorrow), indoors we're thrilled to be hosting a Who's Who of food-and-farming activists, here tomorrow to celebrate the accomplishment of PS 29's first harvest and to speak to our kids!

Hilary Baum is the Director of Baum Forum and President of Public Market Partners, a not-for-profit corporation established in 1991. For 15 years, as a producer of educational seminars, multi-day conferences and special events focusing on food, farming and markets, she has advanced the dialogue on critical issues among industry professionals and culinary students, market managers and family farmers, government officials and concerned citizens. She recently completed her term as founding Coordinating Director of Food Systems Network NYC, a collaborative effort of government agencies, non profits and individuals to further access to fresh and healthy food in all NYC neighborhoods and to strengthen the regional farm and food economy.

Michael Hurwitz is Director of New York City's Greenmarket program. Greenmarket, founded in 1976, is a program of the Council on the Environment of New York City, a nonprofit group that promotes sustainability. Greenmarket operates 46 producer-only farmers’ markets throughout the city and works with 180 producers to preserve 30,000 acres of regional farmland.

Before joining Greenmarket as director in February 2007, Michael was the co-director of Added Value and Herban Solutions, a nonprofit youth and community development organization that he co-founded in Red Hook, Brooklyn, and that operates a 2.5-acre urban farm and two independent farmers’ markets as well as a local community-supported agriculture, or C.S.A., project. Mr. Hurwitz, who grew up in Pittsburgh, graduated from the University of Michigan in 1990 and received a master’s degree in social work from the University of Pennsylvania in 1999. He graduated from the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law at Yeshiva University, where he was a Public Service Scholar, in 2007. He was a 2006 Union Square Award, given to grass-roots activists, and a 2004 Petra fellow.

Christina Mitchell Grace is Manager, Urban Food Systems, New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets. She is a pivotal force behind the SchoolFood Garden-to-Cafeteria Pilot.

Ian Marvey is co-founder and director of Added Value Farm, Red Hook. Added Value's mission is to promote the sustainable development of Red Hook by nurturing a new generation of youth leaders. The farm works towards this goal by creating opportunities for South Brooklyn's youth to expand their knowledge base, develop new skills and positively engage with their community through the operation of a socially responsible urban0farming enterprise. In six years Added Value has trained more than 120 young people, while founding the Red Hook Farmers' Market and CSA and growing a local food system.

Ian, a graduate of Hampshire College, has been organizing youth to become a positive force for social change in postindustrial cities and towns like Holyoke, MA, Camden NJ, and Philadelphia PA for many years. Prior to founding Added Value, Ian designed and implemented innovative service-learning programs for first-time juvenile offenders and non-incarcerated juvenile felons. Ian has also been honored with a Union Square Award and Petra Foundation Fellowship.