For the third year in a row, the Interaction Institute for Social Change (IISC) is working with Food Solutions New England to design and facilitate the 21 Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge (April 9-29) as an extension of our mutual commitment to racial justice. The challenge is a virtual and networked remix of an exercise created by Dr. Eddie Moore, Jr. and Debby Irving, offered as a way of spreading and deepening commitment to learn about, talk about and take action to solve racial injustices in the food and other related systems.
The Keney Park Sustainability Project (KPSP) is a program of the Family Day Foundation, a locally-based organization that engages the community around Keney Park in a variety of areas including: health and nutrition education, landscaping, forest management, waste stream reduction, building and design, and urban agriculture.
Get to know the Keynote Speaker, Jacqueline Maisonpierre! Learn how we can all can promote social and environmental justice in our communities, and hear Jacqueline live at the Grassroots Fund's April 29th RootSkills In-Person Training.
Garden Time operates gardens at three facilities at Rhode Island Adult Correctional Institutions providing over 1,800 inmates with fresh produce while offering men and women who have had limited success in their lives the chance to gain confidence, acquire important life skills, and experience hope.
Food justice is not always linked to environmental justice, but it’s moving closer as more people recognize that the benefits and burdens of how and where food is produced and processed, transported and distributed, purchased and consumed, and finally disposed of—i.e., the “food system”—must be equitably shared across society.
As the New England Grassroots Environment Fund celebrated its 21st birthday on April 1st we believe it is the perfect time focus on one of our core values - Environmental Justice (EJ). While we believe every month should represent EJ month, we’re celebrating the founding vision of the organization with a series of events this month to focus on how our communities and our neighbors can connect, share and act together within the context of building a movement toward environmental justice.
In the past decade, the rising costs of health care services, the obesity and chronic disease epidemic and the impact of social determinants on the health status of Americans have inspired a movement among hospitals to become more than walled venues that care for the acutely ill, to organizations that align all their considerable assets and economic power to build robust communities.
As solar farms have begun to spring up throughout Massachusetts, a group of low-income housing providers and people from low-income communities noticed a growing disparity between the growth of solar in the suburbs and the lack of solar opportunities in the city. Determined and filled with a DIY spirit, Worcester Green Low-Income Housing Coalition has taken on the challenge of developing solar and energy efficiency programs and advocacy in New England's second largest city.
SunPoint Farm Sanctuary is an island of rural New Hampshire nestled in suburban Derry, NH: the farm is 24 acres that abuts 128 acres of conservation land. SPFS works with refugees from Manchester NH, and provides space for them to garden and farm. In the ten years of this program, we have welcomed refugees from Bhutan, Congo, Turkey, and Iraq. What has been dawning on us over the years is to actually integrate the knowledge and skill of the traditional farming methodology from the refugees’ home country and adapt it to the particular challenges of farming in New England.
Equity (beyond “diversity” and “inclusion”) is essential to how we define “quality,” “high performance” and “success.” For us, equity is core to what we seek in the world: dignity and well-being for everyone, and ensuring that resources and power are shared in ways for all people to realize our full potential, and contribute to thriving, sustainable communities.
