Dining reform earns UCI student award

Hai Vo, a 22-year-old who graduated from UC Irvine this spring, will be among the six recipients of the 2009 Brower Youth Award, a national prize for young environmentalists.

Vo will be recognized for his efforts to change the dining system at his university and on campuses throughout the UC system.

He co-founded the UCI branch of the Real Food Challenge after attending a regional conference last year.

The Real Food Challenge is a national network of college students and their allies seeking to shift 20% of purchasing on university campuses by 2020 to “real food”; that is, “ecologically-sound, community-based, humane and fair.” The UC system recently committed to the idea.

Vo and his colleagues held movie nights, speaker panels and Real Food Roundtables where community members came together to eat non-junk food.

For more information, visit the awards website at broweryouthawards.org.

— Candice Baker