Ellie Hohenstein, 2025

Upward Mobility Kitchen: Student Experiences

I have learned a lot about food security and public health programming throughout my education. That said, my time in Halifax, Nova Scotia took this to a whole new level by allowing me to step into the world of those who spend every day making sure people can eat.

We arrived at the kitchen at 6:30 in the morning on Monday, and the team there had already moved on from making over 100 breakfasts for a local high school and were packing up lunch for the elementary schools nearby. I hadn’t realized how different Canada’s school meal program was to ours, and had to confront my naive assumption that every school has a cafeteria and makes sure its students eat. My only experience with school lunches before this trip was my own large high school, which served breakfast and lunch and students could eat for free if they qualified based on their family’s income. As we prepared and packed meals in bulk, I had many conversations with our hosts about how Upward Mobility Kitchens is helping Nova Scotia implement a program where all students will be served lunch at school on a pay-what-you-can basis. This year the program has been rolled out to only elementary schools, but they hope to include middle and high schools in the next few years. In addition to the school meal program, Upward Mobility Kitchens also operates a cafe where people who are experiencing hard times can get a meal that has already been paid for by another individual or a company’s donation.

We were also exposed to other organizations working to support food security in Halifax. We toured and volunteered at the Feed Nova Scotia warehouse, which handles donated food at a scale I have never seen before. We also got to visit Hope Blooms, an organization that helps youth create new social enterprises and teaches classes to build their community’s skills and creativity. What surprised (and impressed!) me most was how interconnected every organization seemed. Everyone knew each other, and their connections made it seem like they were all working together instead of fighting individual battles. When it comes to a challenge as widespread and complicated as food security, I think lifting each other up instead of working independently is the only way we can make a dent. It is this mindset that I have been reflecting on the most since I have returned from Halifax, and I hope to apply it to my work in Boston.