A Path to College Paved With Salad Dressing

Dist. Atty. Gil Garcetti is talking about white backlash, my friend Angela says she hasn’t recovered from white frontlash and my ex-girlfriend can’t figure out what to do with her eyelash.

“ Buy a bottle of salad dressing . Send a kid to college .”

Whoa, whiplash. What in the world are we talking about now?

“Food,” said Melinda McMullen. “Food From the ‘Hood.”

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McMullen is a young, lanky ex-advertising executive who has fallen in love with a bunch of high school students and embarked on a effort to save them from ever having to someday look up at the face of Judge John W. Ouderkirk.

With the aid of Crenshaw biology instructor named Tammy Bird, the two have concocted a scheme to afford scores of inner-city youngsters something that their more fortunate brethren take for granted--college.

It’s called “Food From the ‘Hood,” a self-help program produced and directed by 30 Crenshaw High students that is coming soon to a grocery store near you.

About six months from now, they say, sitting on your grocery store shelf will be a brightly colored, 12-ounce bottle of salad dressing--created, tested and marketed by the students. They are hoping you will buy it.

The plan is that with the money they make from the sales, they can dole out about $100,000 annually in scholarships for students to attend the college or university of their choice, grades permitting. And they must have the grades or they can’t continue in the program. Tutors are available for those who fall behind.

With the aid of investment bankers Luther, Young & Small, the students structured the company like the real thing that it is. There’s a marketing division, product division, sales division, community relations division, even a corporate-giving division.

They have designed a logo and contracted with Your Type, a South-Central Los Angeles printing firm, to produce it. They’ve set the chemists to work to combine just the right ingredients at Sweet Adelaide, a Hawthorne company that produces salad dressing for a number of big-name firms and will do the same for Food From the ‘Hood.

And soon they will meeting with grocery distributors to discuss how to get the product into some 300 grocery stores, all the biggies--Vons, Boys, Ralphs, Lucky, Alpha Beta. How could anybody refuse? At this juncture, I am required to point out that there are no freebies here. The company, the students have insisted, will pay its own way. Charity, no. Investors, yes.

Ahhhh, young entrepreneurs in the making. Super-capitalist Richard Riordan would be proud.

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And from where, you ask, did all this spring.

Try dirt. That’s right, it all started with a plot of unattended land behind Tammy Bird’s chicken coop area at Crenshaw High.

Not long after much of the city had burned to the ground, Bird, working with Gardens for Kids, decided to transform the weed-choked patch into a place for cabbage, lettuce and broccoli, herbs, basil, thyme and oregano.

There were only six students at first, but the numbers quickly grew, with the students working in the garden on Saturdays and Wednesdays after school. Bird had hoped that at the least the garden would give the students something to do. But it did a lot more than that.

Zakihya Hill, a high school junior, found herself engrossed by books about ways to grow foods without pesticides and chemical fertilizers. Her grades picked up, as did those of most of the students.

Raigeil Maniget, 18, who stumbled into the program because he was on Bird’s volleyball team, found: “I could use my business mind from me being on the streets before selling drugs and stuff. I can get into the business world on the legit side.”

Seak Chan, a sophomore, saw hope where there was none before.

“I’m determined to be educated to give something back to my parents,” she said. “I never could have gone to a really good college before.”

*

The students sold the produce at farmers markets around the city, and under a student mandate, they gave 25% to the homeless.

And by the end of the year, they had earned $1,500. They happily bundled up $300, gave it to one student and sent him off to the University of Nevada at Las Vegas. Another $300 was split between two other students, who attend area community colleges.

But it became apparent to the group that they had to change tactics if they planned to award money to 15 students every year. Thus was born Food From the ‘Hood, “The Salad Dressing.” Their efforts have attracted local and national attention. Just last week the City Council awarded the group a $49,500 grant.

For you, a bottle is $2.79.