Wednesday June 12, 2019
5:30 – 8pm
Project Farmhouse
76 East 13th St
Register Here by 6/10 (*required)
Co-sponsored by Philanthropy NY
This year CFF is excited to be hosting our 7th Annual Gathering! Please join us to celebrate accomplishments from the past year and hear from your colleagues about different strategies being used to impact our regional food system.
As part of the evening, we will hear from Groundswell Center for Local Food & Farming, the recipient of the 2019 CFF Champions Award. You will also have a chance to meet the inaugural Seeding Power fellows and hear an update from the fellowship.
The keynote presentation will be given by Dr. Monica White, author of Freedom Farmers, a new book that “reveals agriculture as a site of resistance and provides a historical foundation that adds meaning and context to current conversations around the resurgence of food justice/sovereignty movements in urban spaces.”
Whether your focus is on nutrition or hunger, food chain workers or farmland preservation, emergency food or food waste, we all have a part to play in creating the just food system that everyone deserves. We encourage your attendance whether you’re a long-time CFF member or just entering the field of food systems change.
Join us at the CFF Annual Gathering for an evening of locally sourced food and drink, networking, and updates from the field. You can view pictures from last year’s Annual Gathering here.
This is a funder-only event. All interested funders and donors may attend.
Catering provided by Community Chef Kitchen
More about the presentations
Dr. Monica M. White teaches courses in environmental justice, urban agriculture and community food systems at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She is the first African American woman to earn tenure in both the College of Agricultural Life Sciences and the Gaylord Nelson Institute for Environmental Studies. Her research investigates communities of color and grassroots organizations engaged in the development of sustainable, community food systems as a strategy to respond to issues of hunger and food inaccessibility. She has presented widely on these subjects, from University of Western Cape in South Africa to UC Berkeley to the Detroit Public Library. She is the author of Freedom Farmers: Agricultural Resistance and the Black Freedom Movement (UNC Press, January 2019).
The Seeding Power Fellowship is an innovative 18-month, cohort-based food justice fellowship program for experienced leaders in New York City, the Hudson Valley, and Long Island. Seeding Power is unique in both the region it serves and the focus on movement building in food systems, as opposed to more traditional leadership programs that focus solely on individual skill-building. It places racial equity and social justice at the core of a curriculum customized to the specific needs and assets of each cohort. Seeding Power will provide a space to have challenging conversations among organizations and sectors that are not always totally aligned, in order to find common ground and build consensus on a path forward.
Groundswell Center will be represented by Elizabeth Gabriel, Executive Director, and Alexas Esposito, Farming & Food Justice Program Coordinator. Groundswell Center won the Champion Award for their efforts to train the next generation of sustainable farmers, targeting these programs to marginalized communities, providing business and technical assistance to help them flourish, and doing so with a social justice and equity framework.