Action for Equity & Inclusion

FoodCorps will strive to create an environment that reflects the diversity of our partner communities and in which everyone can show up and feel brave, supported, and valued for the contributions they make to this organization regardless of ability, gender identity, nationality, race, religion, and sexuality. Our program and vision of health will be one that celebrates all bodies and cultures. And we will work to recreate our leadership and decision-making structures to center the voices and act upon the direction of people most impacted by our work in the world and systemic oppression writ large.

FoodCorps will work to shift power, access, and resources within our sphere of influence in order to help create more justice in the world for those most impacted by systemic oppression. We will do this by committing our resources to national, state, and local efforts to create a more equitable school food system—prioritizing communities of color—and by centering the needs and perspectives of those most impacted by food injustice when making decisions about how to move forward. We will revise our organizational policies related to compensation, budgeting, recruitment, promotions, and leadership development in order to reduce internal inequities in access to power, resources, and opportunity, and we will cultivate a sense of shared collective and individual accountability for upholding our policies and priorities.

At FoodCorps, we recognize that systemic racism is one of the root causes of the problem we are trying to solve and that without actively dismantling it, we will never succeed at creating more equitable access to healthy food in schools. It is impossible for us to be neutral on this front. If we are not actively working to be anti-racist, then we are complicit in perpetuating racism. We know that dismantling racism takes time, that we have made and will continue to make mistakes, and that it is work that will never be finished. But this cannot be used as an excuse not to do our part.

We will start by working to rid ourselves of our saviorism impulses and of the expectation that our staff of color can or should take disproportionate responsibility for fixing us. We will provide our entire staff and service corps with the education and tools to recognize and interrupt internalized, interpersonal, and systemic racism and set an expectation that they will put the tools to use as a measure of success. We will name and frame racism when we see it, change ways of working that are embedded in white supremacy culture, and challenge public policies and internal structures of power that reinforce racial inequality.

We will regularly review and hold ourselves accountable to the commitments above and we invite anyone reading this to do the same.