During covid restrictions, Satvika was helping to distribute food to families at a makeshift drive-through. Seeing the unhealthy food, she partnered with a local farm, Veggielution, and created a plan with them to bring their produce to the federal distribution site. “It started off with flyers, and ramped up to brown bags filled with fruits and vegetables that I could hand to the cars along with their processed packages. This was the first time the farm was directly connected to the local school district… Intrigued by the link of nutrition to the highly subsidized and destructive processes of factory farming, inefficient at its core, I reached out to my district’s nutrition service directors. I have been a team member for the past three years, creating and serving a climate-friendly and culturally relevant menu, with items like chana masala and edamame fried rice now a permanent fixture.” One reference wrote, “This has been a lot of work by Satvika to get these dishes included, as the school has a lot of bureaucratic hurdles to get through, including a change in principal.”

Another reference from Friends of the Earth relayed about her further activism in Washington, DC: “Ms. Iyer spoke persuasively to her peers and to policymakers at USDA and in Congress about her own experiences that led her to become passionate about expanding climate-friendly, culturally appropriate lunch options in school … She led a rapid response effort to gather testimonies from youth, parents, and teachers about why they want to see more plant-based school menus and disseminated them to Members of Congress ahead of a key vote on the child nutrition reauthorization bill.

Satvika will major in Environmental Economics and Policy at the University of California Berkeley, and plans to pursue humanitarian engineering, social entrepreneurship, and policy careers that make sustainable choices readily accessible.

Support Young Veg Activists

To send support for additional scholarships and internships, donate at www.vrg.org/donate or call (410) 366-8343. You can also send a donation to VRG, P.O. Box 1463, Baltimore, MD 21203.

Do you know an amazing vegan or vegetarian high school student? If so, let them know about our annual scholarship contest. The deadline for high school seniors is February 20^th of each year. To see scholarship rules and past winners, visit www.vrg.org/student/scholar