Initiatives

 

Join Celebrating Women’s Leadership in Food in Taking the 21-day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge!

This April, the leadership circle of Celebrating Women’s in Leadership Food will be participating in Food Solutions New England 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge. We invite you to join us for our 3-part, facilitated community conversation series during the challenge on Friday April 8, Thursday April 14, and Thursday April 21 from 5:30-7pm! These conversations will offer a brave space to discuss our experiences, insights, and questions that arise from the Racial Equity Challenge, and explore ways we can build from learning into collective action. 

First, learn more and register for the challenge HERE.

Second, register for our community conversations HERE.

 

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Plants to the People

Plants to the People emerged as a farmer-to-farmer mutual aid project rooted in regional community resilience. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, urban growers mobilized to rapidly increase food production for their communities.  Situated within the relational foundation of the CWLF network, rural growers were able to share roughly 7000 plant starts with urban comrades in the Spring and Fall of 2020. 

Plants to the People highlights the importance and power of regional, urban-rural networks and the resilience stemming from these relational networks in times of crisis. 

The goal of Plants to the People moving forward is to:

• • strengthen farmer-to-farmer networks across differences and perceived barriers like geography and race
  • coordinate immediate resources and their distribution across regions as necessary 
  • collaborate in dialogue and action on a structural level to fill gaps in access to the means of production necessary for food sovereignty

       

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PAST INITIATIVES

Growing Power, Cultivating Change: 
Activating through the Racial Liberation Work
of Black Womxn in Food

A Facilitated Conversation 

Celebrating Womxn’s Leadership in Food is creating an inclusive space for our community to come together to explore anti-racism work in the food movement through the lives and writings of powerful Black womxn leaders. We seek to create a brave space in which we can unearth discomfort, engage in transformative conversation, and support each other in building consciousness and activating to make concrete changes. In uplifting womxn leaders in racial liberation, we will discover the ways that their work informs our own efforts to build a just food system, moving us from understanding to action in our lives, work and community.

We are holding these conversations not as experts, but as facilitators and lead learners with hopes of co-creating a space that fosters the kind of growth and change that is possible when we come together with open hearts, deep intentions and a fierce commitment to justice and social change.

Please join us as we look to Black leaders in food and continue our work growing the movement for racial liberation.

Join us Wednesdays September 23rd, Oct 21st and Nov 18th from 6-8pm on Zoom.

 

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Connection and Care Packages

As the pandemic unfolded in the United States, pressure and interest in local and regional food systems deepened. Farmers and farm workers became front line workers and those working on their behalf took on huge roles advocating for their safety and well being. At CWLF we recognized the strain that this, particularly when coupled with the early days of social isolation, would have on leaders in our community. We compiled care packages and mailed them out to womxn working on the front lines and behind the scenes as tokens of solidarity, nurture and relationship in a time of struggle.

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Womxn Teaching Womxn

In partnership with other community organizations, CWLF will be creating a YouTube channel where womxn will be able to share land-based skills and learn from one another. This initiative grows in response to the proliferation of white male teachers in the food and agriculture space, and seeks to amplify the depth of wisdom, knowledge, and skills that exists among leaders in food and agriculture who identify as womxn, queer, trans, Black, Indigenous, and People of Color. In this space we will support the creation of content as well as amplify organizations and individuals who already use video as a means of sharing skills and knowledge.

Stay tuned for more details…