Hattie Carthan Community Food Projects Wins 2020 CFF Champions Award

Hattie Carthan Community Food Projects of Brooklyn, NY has been named the winner of the 2020 Community Food Funders Champions Award!

Five funders in the CFF network, plus the 2019 winner Groundswell Center, comprised the selection committee. Hattie Carthan was chosen in recognition of their community-based principles, food production and food access programs, spiritual guidance and healing, and local leadership. In other years a representative from the organization would present about their work at the CFF Annual Gathering, but that event has been canceled this year due to Covid-19. Instead, a virtual award presentation was held in which Hattie Carthan Director Yonnette Fleming shared about the organization.

Watch a video below of the online award presentation held on July 9th.

2020 Champion: Hattie Carthan Community Food Projects

Hattie Carthan Community Food Project is a grassroots, people of color-led agricultural revitalization project in Central Brooklyn whose vision is to cultivate a healthy, holistic, and self-sufficient community grounded in the systems and cycles of the earth. Hattie Carthan, and its director, Yonnette Fleming, grow food and community leadership as a bulwark against racism, the alienating effects of gentrification, and prevalence of diet-related disease while establishing a vibrant base for collective action and healing. They support a Farmer’s Market, historic Community Garden, and an Herban Farm and Healing Center.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is Yonnette-Flemming.jpeg
Yonnette Fleming

The Hattie Carthan Community Farmer’s Market opened in July 2009 after Yonnette Fleming, President of the Hattie Carthan Community Garden, and 13 Hattie Carthan gardeners reclaimed and transformed a garbage filled lot. They have distributed over 20 tons of fresh food and processed 30 tons of waste through a community compost system.

In 2011, Yonnette initiated an Urban Agriculture Youth Corps, an 8-month youth leadership program program for local teens who learn about food justice, herbal methods, and support all activities of the organization.

The Herban Farm and Healing Center sits on a reclaimed abandoned lot, on which Yonnette and volunteers have built a vibrant farm, greenhouse, apothecary, and healing spaces where community celebrations take place and people reclaim their wholeness through powerful workshops. The work involved hauling truckloads of toxic asphalt out of the lot and removing six feet worth of tainted soil and then replenishing it with fresh soil, sand, leaf litter and compost. This work was done with all volunteer labor. 

Hattie Carthan is a space for growth, love, creativity, beauty, and collective action. It is a labor of love led by Black women.

The following video was made about Hattie Carthan in 2017


More about the CFF Champions Award

The Community Food Funders steering committee created the CFF Champions Award to recognize the leaders empowering food system change in our region. The award aims to promote the work of an outstanding leader or organization that is working towards the transition of our food system to one that pursues a true triple bottom line: a system that honors and values people, the environment, and sustainable economic models.

Thank you to all the funders who submitted nominations

Filed under: Films & Video, NewsTagged with: ,