about the campaign
For more than 20 years, our organization has brought the values of social justice into digital media education and community media engagement. Every one of our staff has played a role in capturing the sometimes difficult, sometimes transformative stories of individual community members in their struggles for equity and wholeness. Storycenter is excited to announce Sowing Equity - our Fall fundraising campaign to support the creation of stories on Food Justice– all the ways communities in the United States are exercising their right to fresh, affordable, nutritious, and culturally appropriate food.
We will be joining with three organizations, Re-Vision in Denver, Colorado; Mandela Marketplace in Oakland, California, and Backyard Gardners Network, a grassroots food organization in New Orleans, Louisiana to create a collection of 10 stories from each community about how activists are providing alternatives for sustainable food delivery and consumption. The stories will be used by those individuals, organizations and communities to assist with their efforts, and become part of our All Together Now collection of stories on Civil and Human Rights.
“If we’re talking about social justice it has to encompass the food that we eat, the people that grow the food, how they’re treated, their health benefits, their wages. How hard they’re living. Are they living in substandard housing? Do they have heat and hot water? What about the children? Are they getting a good education? Is it quality in terms of schools? So for me, the movement started about growing food but then blossomed into this social justice conscious.”
Recipient Organizations
Re:Vision International
Re:Vision is non-profit organization committed to partnering with Westwood, and neighborhoods like it, to grow solutions. Since 2007, Re:Vision has worked with residents to transform a food desert into a local food oasis, to train local men and women as community leaders, and to grow community ownership in Denver. Re:Vision is dedicated to keeping power in the hands of the people and to cultivating thriving, self-sufficient communities. By growing solutions that are owned-locally, Re:Vision is building a model that can be scaled nationally, one neighborhood at a time.
Mandela Marketplace
Mandela MarketPlace is a non-profit organization that works in partnership with local residents, family farmers, and community-based businesses to improve health, create wealth, and build assets through cooperative food enterprises in low income communities. Our approach is based on a systems model that addresses issues of economic disinvestment, food insecurity, and health inequity, building on community assets to cultivate a thriving economy and local food system.
Backyard Gardeners Network
The Backyard Gardeners Network is a Lower 9th Ward based nonprofit organization whose mission is to sustain and strengthen the historically self-sufficient and deeply rooted community of the Lower 9th Ward of New Orleans, LA using our own food growing traditions as a platform to build community, revitalize the neighborhood and preserve our cultural heritage. We currently manage two community gardens in the Lower 9th Ward, the Laurentine Ernst Community Garden and the Guerrilla Garden, and are spearheading the development of the Ernst Garden Resource Center.
View Documentary:
Tracing the Paths: Telling Stories of Food Dignity
Blog posts about sowing equity
