Co-Chairs Ann Heslin and Catherine Hales; FirstLine Schools Board President Brian Egana; Patron Co-Chair, Board Member and sponsor Capital One representative Carol Starr; and Langston Hughes Academy Leader Kamisha Gray are pictured representing “An Edible Evening,” benefiting Edible Schoolyard New Orleans. This ninth annual gala will be held Thursday, March 22 at the Langston Hughes Academy Dreamkeeper Garden.
The Patron Party will begin at 6 p.m., hosted by Mopho + Maypop, followed by the gala at 7, which will feature wines by Presqu’ile Winery, a specialty cocktail by Cure Co. with Tito’s Vodka, beer from Dixie Beer, a beer garden featuring local micro-breweries, live music, a raffle and food by more than 30 local restaurants.
ESYNOLA offers one of the nation’s most creative and comprehensive iterations of seed-to-table food and nutrition education programming, integrating over 4,000 gardening and cooking classes each year into the school curriculum, cafeterias and culture of four FirstLine K-8 schools. The school gardens total more than two acres of herbs and flowers, vegetable production rows, blossoming citrus groves, butterfly meadows and wetlands areas. Langston Hughes Academy is home to chickens, goats and a pot-bellied pig. Teaching kitchens at Samuel J. Green and Arthur Ashe Charter Schools complement an outdoor environmental education program where children learn to appreciate nature and to be responsible stewards of the environment. The gardens help teach students how to grow food, prepare it in healthy ways and enjoy it in community, in the joyful non-conventional learning spaces of organic gardens and teaching kitchens.
Gala tickets are $60, and Patron tickets start at $250 a couple; call 421-1060 and visit ESYNola.org to learn more and purchase tickets.
Special thanks to Alisha Johnson Perry, Director of Development for FirstLine Schools for her invaluable assistance.
Photographed by Jeffery Johnston
