AUNI alumni (Photo via AUNI website).

The wonderful young folks from the Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative (AUNI), a school-based program of the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships, are hosting a delicious fundraiser on Saturday, March 29. The annual Eats and Beats community dinner is an event that showcases youth leadership and skills and also helps raise funds for AUNI’s High School Internship Program.

West Philly Local wrote about AUNI’s youth efforts to grow and sell organic food in West Philadelphia. AUNI also offers healthy cooking lessons to high-school students and older community members and teaches how to tend to school gardens and operate farmers markets and CSAs.

Eats and Beats serves a locally sourced, 4-course organic meal prepared and grown by youth interns, featuring ingredients from local farms, restaurants and businesses, including Bon Appetit, Franklin Fountain, Guacamole, Milk and Honey, Lancaster Farm Fresh, John and Kira’s Chocolates, Little Baby’s Ice Cream, Pure Fare and Tara’s Catering. The event will also include live entertainment and speakers, a silent auction and raffle with gift certificates to restaurants, yoga, fitness and cooking classes, and locally-made arts and crafts.

The event will take place at the Mantua Haverford Community Center (631 N. 39th Street) from 5:30-8:30 p.m.. Suggested minimum donation is $25. Click here for more information and to RSVP.

The Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative, a school-based program of the University of Pennsylvania’s Netter Center for Community Partnerships, is hosting its fourth annual Eats and Beats community dinner to showcase youth leadership and skills. AUNI encourages West Philadelphia students to grow, cook, consume and sell healthy foods. The AUNI Youth Development Program employs more than 100 teens to grow and sell organic food at high school gardens and to teach nutrition to community groups.

The dinner will be held at 5:30-8:30 p.m., Saturday, Nov. 10, at the Calvary Center for Culture and Community (48th and Baltimore). The menu will feature a locally sourced, organic five-course meal grown and prepared by the AUNI youth crews.

“At Eats and Beats, the youth plan the menu, prepare the food and give musical performances. They’re also taking care of ticket sales,” says Ty Holmberg, AUNI coordinator.

Tickets ($25) are available at the AUNI stand at the Clark Park Farmers’ Market 10 a.m.-2 p.m. on Saturdays and at the Mariposa Food Co-op during open hours. RSVPs are also being collected online at www.urbannutrition.org/eatsandbeats.

For more information visit www.urbannutrition.org or email: kristins@urbannutrition.org.

A new community farm is coming to West Philly. A groundbreaking ceremony for the Community Farm and Food Resource Center at Bartram’s Garden (54th St. & Lindbergh Blvd.) is taking place today at 4 p.m. Community members are invited.

This project has come to life thanks to the University of Pennsylvania’s Agatston Urban Nutrition Initiative with the help of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society , which is providing seedlings, resources and supplies to growers. Donations from the City and other organizations also made it possible.

The new farm is going to increase the community’s access to local, organic, and affordable food.  The goal of this project is to provide a space for everyone to develop a relationship with the land.

Bartram High School students will be hired to plant, grow, harvest and sell the produce. Plans are that by next growing season, the 3.5-acre farm and resource center will have a crop field where the students will raise annual vegetables. There will also be a community garden with individual plots tended by residents, an orchard of 50 fruit trees, a 1,000-foot-long perennial berry patch and a new greenhouse to start organic seedlings.

Future plans for the farm and resource center include replacing a gravel parking lot with a food-education center, complete with a kitchen, a classroom space and a packing shed/walk-in cooler/wash station for pre-sale vegetable preparation.