Recap: Feeding and Funding Our City

On March 1st, CFF partnered with Philanthropy New York and the NYC Workforce Funders to host a briefing titled, Feeding and Funding Our City: Recovery for New York City’s Invisibilized Food Ecosystem.

The session featured a discussion with organizers from Street Vendor Project and Los Deliveristas Unidos, moderated by North Star Fund’s Executive Director Jenn Ching.

Both groups are coming off major policy wins in 2021, such as: such as: creating the first centralized civilian office for street vendors in NYC; lifting the cap on vendor permits for the first time in 40 years; securing six groundbreaking NYC bills that provide labor rights and protections for 65,000 app delivery workers; and helping to create the Excluded Workers Fund, a $2.1 Billion fund New Yorkers excluded from ​relief due to the nature of their work or immigration status.

But the work doesn’t stop there. Both organizations highlighted how increased vigilance is needed after a “win” is secured, to monitor the implementation, budget allocation, and enforcement of any legislative changes. They shared how and why grassroots organizing is central to their strategy, as Mohamed said:

Most of the funding we get, we get for our direct services. And the direct services are great and important, but they are not the solution. Organizing is the solution. Organizing is the answer. Organizing is what’s going to be really tangible and impactful.

Mohamed Attia, SVP Director

After tracing the growth of both organizations during the Covid-19 pandemic, and highlighting what comes next, our conversation turned to funding, and how those in the philanthropic sector can be better supporters of this work. The main themes included multi-year funding for general operating support, and for foundations to re-evaluate their metrics that make it so hard to qualify and therefore support the long-term work of community organizing. To that end, North Star Fund and New York Foundation partnered to produce two reports specifically on that topic, helping foundations understand how they can measure the impacts of organizing.

Since the beginning of WJP we have come to understand that if we really want to make transformative changes and address the root causes of the exploitation that workers are facing, we need to build power, and make systemic changes.

Ligia Guallpa, Co-Executive Director, Workers Justice Project

The speakers were:

  • Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez, Street Vendor Project
  • Mohamed Attia, Street Vendor Project 
  • Ligia Guallpa, Worker’s Justice Project
  • Hildalyn Colón Hernández, Worker’s Justice Project
  • Jennifer Ching (moderator), North Star Fund

A recording of the session is shared below. You can use the following time markers to jump to different sections.

  • Start – Welcome and intro by Adam Liebowitz, CFF Director
  • 4:05 – Framing and learning objectives by Jenn Ching, Executive Director, North Star Fund
  • 8:00 – Introduction to Worker’s Justice Project / Los Deliveristas Unidos
  • 11:20 – Introduction to Street Vendor Project
  • 16:30 – Moderated discussion
    • 17:20 – Direct services vs organizing
    • 23:55 – Recent campaign victories and challenges
    • 34:40 – Philanthropic practices, during Covid and beyond
  • 54:00 – Q&A
  • 1:01:05 – Looking to the future

Resources

The following resources were shared with participants during the briefing

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