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Plus, the Chicago region farmers market schedule
Photo by Bob Benenson
A quick issue of Local Food Forum, because I’m in Dearborn, Michigan for a conference on regenerative agriculture presented by The Henry Ford non-profit and the Clinton Global Initiative. The event is on the grounds of the Henry Ford Museum of American Innovation, which (as you can see in the photo) is just lovely.
I’ll have a lot of great content coming your way over the next few days.
Urban Farming Dynamo Natasha Nicholes Joins Lineup for Our Next Webinar
Many leaders seeking to revitalize Chicago's underserved and under-resourced communities are promoting the development, by people of color, of community gardens and urban farms.
These small growing projects are helping restore hope, jobs and opportunity to challenged communities, while helping residents who face food insecurity to feed themselves — as Chicago manifests what has become a powerful national movement under the banner of food sovereignty.
This is the topic of Local Food Forum's next "Better" Dialogues webinar, "Gardens in a City: Cultivating Hope in Chicago, which takes place on Monday (June 17) at 7 p.m. central time. The title references Chicago's official motto, Urbs in Horto, which translates from Latin as "city in a garden."
And we are thrilled to share that Natasha Nicholes, a dynamic change-maker as founder and executive director of the We Sow. We Grow. urban farm in the West Pullman neighborhood on Chicago’s South Side, is joining our already amazing lineup of guests.
The program will focus on the work of Community Food Navigator, a Chicago non-profit launched in 2020. Its focus is on providing tools and resources to help people of color in underserved areas produce food for themselves and their communities — the core of the concept known as food sovereignty.
Our featured guest is Nick Davis, managing director of Community Food Navigator. As Nick told Local Food Forum for an article published earlier this year, “The purpose of the Community Food Navigator is really to build power amongst growers of color, build connections and relationships in our food system, and coordinate our food system a little bit better."
He continued, “It's important that the community has a sense of how other people, block by block and neighborhood by neighborhood and then the region, define that for themselves, and how we can start to organize and convene people and tighten up our relational networks so that we can actually move towards those definitions of visions of food sovereignty.”
Nick also said he wants to make it clear that Community Food Navigator is powered and informed by the community of growers, food educators, food mobilizers and organizers who have been doing incredible work for years. “We just co-design and implement strategies to address issues they raise,” he added.
Nick will be joined by Natasha and by Angela Taylor, whose work focuses on bringing the benefits of hyper-locally produced food to the underserved Garfield Park communities on Chicago's West Side. She serves as wellness coordinator for the Garfield Park Community Council, focusing on the Garfield Park Garden Network, the seasonal Neighborhood Market (an outdoor farmers market), youth interns, and integrated wellness activities.
Other leaders in the urban growing community who are aligned with Community Food Navigator's work may join us for the webinar.
Join co-hosts Bob Benenson of Local Food Forum and Chef Sarah Stegner of suburban Chicago's Prairie Grass Cafe for this free program. There will be Q&A, so bring your questions.
Chicago Region Farmers Market Schedule
Asterisk (*) means season opening market
Friday, June 14