These amazing organizations support justice and equity through environmental activism, youth organizing, food systems work, and more.
Racial justice matters every day. At FoodCorps, we’re on a journey toward becoming an anti-racist organization, and we’re still learning what that means and how to turn our intentions into practice.
Today, we’re taking action by shining a light on powerful Black-led community organizations, including many we partner with. Each of these organizations supports justice and equity through environmental activism, youth organizing, food systems work, and more. We hope you’ll visit their websites, follow them on social media, and donate to their causes.
Acta Non Verba“Acta Non Verba: Youth Urban Farm Project (ANV) elevates life in Oakland and beyond by challenging oppressive dynamics and environments through urban farming. Founded and led mainly by women of color from the surrounding neighborhood and larger community, ANV creates a safe and creative outdoor space for children, youth, and families in East Oakland, CA. ANV engages and strengthens young people’s understanding of nutrition, food production, and healthy living as well as strengthens their ties to the community.”
Bennu Gardens“Bennu Gardens addresses critical national issues including, inclusive economic empowerment, the decline in locally grown agriculture, a growing concern for the well-being and productivity of youth, and the need to create sustainable and healthy underserved communities through food and the land.”
Black Food Sovereignty Coalition“The Black Food Sovereignty Coalition (BFSC) serves as a collaboration hub for Black and Brown communities to confront the systemic barriers that make food, place and economic opportunities inaccessible to us. BFSC is focused on meeting these barriers with creative, innovative, and sustainable solutions. Built on a decade of work of founding members of the Black Food Sovereignty Council and other Black-identified leaders and stakeholders in the Pacific Northwest, the BFSC mission is to ignite Black and brown communities to participate as owners and movement leaders within food systems, placemaking, and economic development.”
CTCORE-Organize Now!“CTCORE-Organize Now! is dedicated to building communities of racial justice freedom fighters to dismantle systemic and structural racism in the state of Connecticut. We achieve our mission through a three-pillared movement building strategy and combine local base building (through our chapters) with issue-focused statewide network building.”
“The Detroit Black Community Food Security Network (DBCFSN) was formed in February 2006 to address food insecurity in Detroit’s Black community and to organize members of that community to play a more active leadership role in the local food security movement. We observed that many of the key players in the local urban agriculture movement were young whites, who while well-intentioned, never-the-less, exerted a degree of control inordinate to their numbers in Detroit’s population. Many of those individuals moved to Detroit from other places specifically to engage in agricultural or other food security work. It was and is our view that the most effective movements grow organically from the people whom they are designed to serve. Representatives of Detroit’s majority African-American population must be in the leadership of efforts to foster food justice and food security in Detroit. While our specific focus is on Detroit’s African-American community, we realize that improved policy and an improved localized food system is a benefit to all Detroit residents.”
Dreaming Out Loud Inc.“DOL is rebuilding urban, community-based food systems through cooperative social enterprise: increasing access to healthy food, improving community health, supporting entrepreneurs and cooperatives from low-income communities; and creating opportunities for at-risk residents to earn sustainable, family-supporting wages and build wealth. We believe that all communities deserve equal access to fresh, healthy food choices, but that achieving this requires moving beyond the “access” paradigm to a focus on community self-determination and food sovereignty. We are working to create an integrated pipeline to jobs, economic opportunity, and community wealth-building for our most marginalized communities, utilizing the food system as the catalyst.”
EBPREC“East Bay Permanent Real Estate Cooperative (EB PREC) is a democratic, People of Color led cooperative that takes land and housing off the speculative market to create permanently affordable, community controlled land and housing. We are turning a racist, classist housing market into a tool that can build wealth for the groups most disenfranchised by it.”
KairosPDX“KairosPDX is an education nonprofit focused on transforming education through a model built on love and inclusion that elevates the voices of historically underserved children, their families and their communities. ‘Kairos’ is an ancient Greek word meaning the right or opportune moment (the supreme moment), or a moment of indeterminate time in which something special happens.”
“The National Black Food and Justice Alliance represents hundreds of Black urban and rural farmers, organizers, and land stewards based nationwide working together towards an intergenerational, urban/rural movement to map, assess, train and deepen the organizing, institution building and advocacy work protecting Black land and work towards food sovereignty. “
Rise & Root Farm“Rise & Root Farm is a five-acre farm, run cooperatively by four owners who are women, intergenerational, multi-racial, and LGBTQ. We’re located in the Black Dirt region of Orange County, NY, in the lower Hudson Valley. The farm is rooted in social justice, and through the healing power of food and farming we work to build a more equitable food system. We are blessed to steward the land we grow on and to have the opportunity to support our communities through farming. We invite people, especially from the BIPOC and LGBTQ+ communities, to come to the farm through a variety of events, and find a welcoming agricultural space.”
Sankofa Farms“Sankofa Farms LLC is a multifaceted agricultural entity that seeks to assist changing the food intake habits of those living in and affected by food deserts. Within Durham and Orange County we have become aware of the income and food availability gap that exists within minority groups. The goal of Sankofa Farms is to create a sustainable food source for minorities in both rural and urban areas located in Durham and Orange County, North Carolina.”
Soil Generation“Soil Generation is a Black & Brown-led coalition of gardeners, farmers, individuals, and community-based organizations working to ensure people of color regain community control of land and food, to secure access to the resources necessary to determine how the land is used, address community health concerns, grow food and improve the environment. We will reach these goals through relationship building, honoring culture, community education, organizing, activism and advocacy: a People’s Agroecology.”
Somali Bantu Community Association“We are the Somali Bantu Community Association, where we set the wheels of food justice in motion by growing chemical-free food and building a united community. Our mission is to provide vital transitional services, advocacy, and programming that empowers members of the refugee community to uphold cultural identity and thrive in their new life here in Lewiston, Maine.”
Soul Fire Farm“Soul Fire Farm is an Afro-Indigenous centered community farm committed to uprooting racism and seeding sovereignty in the food system. We raise and distribute life-giving food as a means to end food apartheid. With deep reverence for the land and wisdom of our ancestors, we work to reclaim our collective right to belong to the earth and to have agency in the food system. We bring diverse communities together on this healing land to share skills on sustainable agriculture, natural building, spiritual activism, health, and environmental justice. We are training the next generation of activist-farmers and strengthening the movements for food sovereignty and community self-determination.”
University of New Mexico’s Community Engagement Center“Our mission: Anti-racist leadership development for community capacity building. Our vision: Nurture a diverse leadership of the next generation of civically minded youth at the University of New Mexico and Central New Mexico Community College from local neighborhoods for community capacity building.”
Food as Medicine: Teaching Indigenous Foodways
A Day in the Life: Noah Doederlein, School Nutrition Member
A Day in the Life: Eva Gertz, School Nutrition Member
