Jackie Joyner-Kersee is growing opportunities for young people at the newly opened JJK Fan

With a focus on food, agriculture, and nutrition, the new JJK Fan Innovation Center offers education and career pathways to East St. Louis youth.

Written by Liz Miller
Visuals by Ella Manthey

Olympic Gold Medalist Jackie Joyner-Kersee sees a clear connection between athletics and agriculture — one she hopes to seed into the next generation.

“As an athlete, it was very important for me to understand the different things that I was putting into my body to be able to function at a high level,” Joyner-Kersee says.

Long before she was known worldwide as an Olympic champion, Joyner-Kersee was a kid growing up in East St. Louis, Illinois, where she spent many afternoons at the Mary Brown Community Center. She has described the center as a “second home” throughout her childhood, providing her with a library, educational opportunities, and perhaps most critically, track and field training.

Over three decades ago, when she learned the Mary Brown center had closed, Joyner-Kersee felt called to close the gap. She founded the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Foundation in 1988 and opened the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Center in 2000, both with the mission to serve youth and families through programs designed to address challenges caused by poverty, food insecurity, and limited access to resources.

On June 17, Joyner-Kersee celebrated another milestone achievement toward that mission with the opening of the 24,000-square-foot Jackie Joyner-Kersee Food, Agriculture and Nutrition Innovation Center (JJK Fan).

“We use athletics at the JJK Center as a hook to bring our young people in, in the hopes of exposing them to things they don’t know they need to be exposed to,” Joyner-Kersee says. “When it comes to agriculture and food, a lot of them, first thing, might say, ‘Oh, I don’t like zucchini. Then all of a sudden you do zucchini sticks. And all of a sudden they love zucchini. They just didn’t like it because they didn’t like how it looked, but now they make zucchini sticks.”

For Joyner-Kersee, food and agriculture is not just connected to athletics and health and wellness, but also career opportunities. The JJK Fan offers hands-on education and programming around almost every aspect of food systems. It builds on the work already happening at the JJK Center, including its greenhouse, garden, and aquaponic farm, to offer a working lab, teaching kitchen, a maker’s construction space and classrooms for 4-H and other programs.

Since 2022, the JJK Foundation has been part of a unique public-private partnership with the Donald Danforth Plant Science Center, the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, and the University of Illinois Extension to open the JJK Fan. Lansdowne UP runs the JJK Fan’s construction programming — including a youth woodworking class this summer — while the Danforth Center oversees its plant-science education programming.

Amy Funk, Director of the JJK Fan and the Danforth Center, says JJK Fan functions as a hub of the collective partnership of the four institutions to really develop and gain interest in career pathways as it relates to food, ag and nutrition.

“It’s important to get youth involved within the food system so that they can be the decision makers of the future,” Funk says. “There’s also, when you think of St. Louis, a budding agtech industry including bioscience, GIS, and we need our kids to have the access points and start as early as possible so they can see these as viable options for them as they age through the program. We often say we’re trying to get kids to age through ag.”

Funk has already seen the doors that open to young people involved in the JJK Center and JJK Fan programs. As an example, she points to the work of Antonio Brazelton, the Senior Coordinator of Research Partnerships at the JFK Fan, and a PhD candidate in Plant and Microbial Biosciences at WashU.

“He is studying the root architecture of 18 heirloom varieties of collard greens, and in doing that, we were able to engage youth of all ages with his research,” Funk says. “And I found that our kids, that really resonated with them in very meaningful ways because collard greens are in every family gathering, whether it’s Thanksgiving or Christmas. And as part of that work we had interns actively work with Antonio, one of which now is graduating college and looking to go into data science in the plant science field. And she would credit some of that to her work with Antonio and really opening a world to her that she didn’t know exists previously.”

The opening of the JJK Fan is particularly meaningful to Joyner-Kersee, who notes that the JJK Center and JJK Fan serve families and youth living with food insecurity and in neighborhoods with limited access to fresh and locally grown fruits and vegetables.

“A lot of our young people deal with food insecurity,” Joyner-Kersee says. “We live in a food desert, but then our young people are planting seeds, being able to see collard greens grow, cabbage, onions, tomatoes, spinach, kale, just to name a few. But we’re also introducing them to: if you plant the seed today, and continue to water the seed, you will see it blossom. We’re watering the seeds with our young people.”

She hopes in the future for an endowment for the JJK Foundation to sustain all of the work it’s doing in the East St. Louis community — for the children of today who could be the athletes, scientists, and community leaders of tomorrow.

“As a youngster growing up, I didn’t know that this could be possible,” Joyner-Kersee says. “I didn’t know I could be in the position that I’m in today. And so being able to take all the lessons that others taught me and the energies that they poured into me now as a gift back to other families, to our community, I can give it back. The sustainability of all of this is very important and that it would definitely outlive me. But more importantly, I want whoever is to take my place that they will continue the mission and the vision that’s already been laid out as part of the blueprints.”

JOIN THE STORY:

• Learn more about the Jackie Joyner-Kersee Food, Agriculture and Nutrition Innovation Center on its website.