Cultivating Food Systems Change
Tuesday June 27, 2023
11:00 am – 12:00 pm ET
Zoom meeting
Captioning and interpretation available
Register Here
Join the 2022 CFF Champion Award winner, Food for the Spirit, for this year’s Champions Briefing, an event wholly designed and created by the award recipient.
Come together to learn about community-led food initiatives addressing issues of race and racism in the food system, and explore values and perspectives about how philanthropy can work in partnership with community to address these systemic inequities.
Food for the Spirit (F4tS) is made up of (and partners with) Black, Indigenous, Asian, Latinx, and other farmers and food actors of color because we know people most impacted by race and racism have solutions to the issues our communities experience. Furthermore, it is critical that we are connected with opportunities and funding to resource our work. Please join F4tS and network members and partners for this critical conversation. F4tS’s networks include members of the Buffalo Food Equity Network, Genesee Valley Black Farmers, and others.
At the conclusion of this event we will also be announcing the new 2023 CFF Champions Award recipient!
The speakers will be:
Rebekah Williams, Co-Founding Director. Rebekah is an organizer and trainer from Western New York and co-founder of Food for the Spirit and the Buffalo Food Equity Network. With over twenty years working in nonprofits, Rebekah has experience encouraging youth leadership, social and racial justice, environmentalism, and the arts. Rebekah is actively engaged in supporting the development of a cooperative enterprise for Black farmers in NYS, she is supporting the development of the Genesee Valley Black Farmers Collective, and she is participating in Race Forward’s Policy Innovation Lab.
Jared Stohl, Facilitator. Jared is a multiracial facilitator, teacher, scholar, and social justice advocate, and I currently serve as a facilitator with Food for the Spirit, in addition to teaching Sociology at the University at Buffalo (UB). After earning my PhD in Sociology from UB in 2020 with a focus on urban farming, food justice, racial inequality and environmental issues, I’m now engaged in a variety of grassroots projects focused on fighting against food apartheid and injustice in Buffalo and Western New York (WNY), including serving as a member of the WNY Food Stories Project leadership team. I reside with my family in Wilson, NY and continue to hone my skills as a gardener, composter, and land steward.
Food for the Spirit was the 2022 winner of the Community Food Funders Champion Award. One of the perks of the award is to host a briefing with CFF on content of the awardee’s choosing. This event is the CFF “Champions Briefing” for this year.
More about Food for the Spirit
Food for the Spirit is a nonprofit organization that uses the arts and creative facilitation to support racial healing, ecological justice, and equitable food systems. They center BIPOC folks in organizing and planning efforts because they believe that people who are most impacted by issues of race and racism in the food system are most equipped to identify the issues and solutions to those issues.
F4tS builds power through relational-organizing and trust-building. Partnering with people and communities in the City of Buffalo, Western New York, the Genesee Valley Region, and throughout New York State, F4tS supports the development of networks where local people can work together to address the issues they experience. Soon, Food for the Spirit will be hiring its first full time staff person to serve as Director of the Buffalo Food Equity Network.