By Jennifer Ramo, published in the Albuquerque Journal
“It’s a mud day,” Dr. Karen Sanchez-Griego mentioned on our call. It took my brain a few seconds to register what a mud day might be. It was a snow day but with mud.
The entire student body of the Cuba Independent School District (CISD) was working remotely because the roads had turned to mud. I have driven those craggy dust cloud roads around Cuba between Counselor and Ojo Encino and Torreon.
In my role at New Mexico Appleseed, I have worked for years to try to get USDA summer feeding programs up and running out there and failed entirely because of these roads.
Jennifer Ramo is the founder and executive director of New Mexico Appleseed. She created Appleseed’s first-in-the-nation programs such as the Hunger-Free Students’ Bill of Rights (prohibited lunch shaming children whose parents owe school meal debt), the Breakfast After the Bell law (requires all high-poverty elementary schools to serve breakfast during the school day) and the Food Access Navigator project on the Navajo Nation.
Her anti-hunger and homelessness work has received international attention and has been highlighted in the New York Times, CNN, USA Today, Le Monde, BBC, and Al Jazeera, among others. Her writing has appeared in the Washington Post, NYLON Magazine, and Parents Magazine.
Ramo is a graduate of Albuquerque Academy, the University of Southern California, and Tulane Law School.