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INCREASING HEALTHY FOOD ACCESS IN ‘NORMAL’ TIMES ENABLES SURVIVAL & RESILIENCY DURING AN EXTRAORDINARY CRISIS

6/3/2020

Beginning in 2015, DAISA Enterprises, along with Catherine Sands from Fertile Ground, served as the Learning & Evaluation partners for the Healthy Food Fund (HFF) of the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation. This three-year initiative provided grants in the $30,000 - $60,000 range to 25 nonprofit organizations in Connecticut, Massachusetts, Maine and New Hampshire and sought to examine the impact of strategic investments in local fresh food organizations on improving access to healthy food for low- and middle-income households. The communities involved did not have adequate access to healthy, culturally preferred, and affordable foods for all residents, therefore effective, innovative and agile approaches were necessary. As such, DAISA worked closely with Foundation staff and with leaders of the funded programs and developed and tracked metrics aligned with the HFF Theory of Change. In addition, by collaborating with the grantee partners, DAISA facilitated a monthly Community of Practice to foster cross-fertilization of ideas, techniques, and actionable lessons learned. At the time, HFF aimed to have and document a measurable impact on the community food environment and increase distribution of healthy food. With the arrival of COVID-19 in early 2020, those outcomes and the infrastructure and relationships which enabled their success now contribute to effective, local responses.

Many of the grantee organizations, such as Mill City Grows Mobile Market pictured above, were already working to expand access and affordability where commercial markets had often failed or were non-existent, prior to funding. Through the initiative they continued to build community food infrastructure as well as innovative programs such as farmers’ markets, community-supported agriculture (CSA), mobile markets, town and urban farms, food banks, and gleaning programs. Meaningful partnerships also evolved that fostered and sustained this higher level of access to fresh food and ensured continued progress. Broader achievements include an expanded, collective sense of belonging and greater health equity ― both within their own organizations and communities.

After an investment of $3.7M from the Harvard Pilgrim Health Care Foundation, DAISA calculated a $9.6M return in the value of healthy foods reaching households in target communities; every $1 invested yielded about $2.5 in food sold/distributed. The above chart shows the initiative’s efforts and the marked increases in total food sales, access points (sales and distribution), partners and skill-building participants.

During the years with the Healthy Food Fund, grantee partners shared programmatic insights and innovations and achieved important outcomes. However, organizations were also able to achieve greater program efficacy and leverage their experiences to boost community engagement. DAISA also learned that 80% of HFF project leaders actively worked on efforts to increase racial equity and diversity within their organizations, through strategies, and via their offering to their customers.

In these times of crisis with COVID-19 and the related disproportionate harm and suffering within communities of color, and now the increase in demonstrations and destruction, it is these same organizations that have the networks, relationships and self-determination to survive with deep resilience and move towards recovery and change. These leaders remind us all that this work is complex and intersects so many aspects of health and well-being, requiring time, support and multi-year funding and investment.

“Due to Harvard Pilgrim's support over the last three years, Growing Places has been able to build capacity to expand from one focus - gardening - to becoming a fresh, healthy food access connector in North Central MA.”
Ayn Yeagle, Executive Director, Growing Places, Leominster, MA; 2019

LEARN MORE

Read the full Healthy Food Fund: Lessons Learned report to learn more about the results of the first three years of the Healthy Food Fund Initiative (2016-2018).

Check out the case study document Highlighting Impacts of Skill-building Opportunities written by DAISA and Fertile Ground to highlight the success factors and impacts of providing teaching opportunities in nutrition, cooking and other skills.

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NORTH SPORE: AN EXAMPLE OF A SUSTAINABLE FOOD COMPANY AND HOW THEY MAKE THE CASE FOR ENVISIONING A NEW FOOD SYSTEM

4/15/2020

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Over the second half of 2019, DAISA started an engagement with North Spore to support the development of the growth strategy of the company. The ultimate goal of this project is to provide access to the right capital to North Spore, allowing the company to grow while retaining their mission and values.

WHO IS NORTH SPORE?
This Maine-based company founded by three college colleagues represents how passionate entrepreneurs of the food system can create new ways to reshape the system. North Spore commercializes a variety of mushroom production tools, especially edible mushroom spawns – which are the equivalent of the seeds for the plants. Their main segment of clients are small farmers and home growers. With its strong value for collaboration and knowledge sharing, North Spore is demystifying mushroom production for thousands of people.

From left to right: North Spore Founders Jon Carver, Matt McInnis, and Eliah Thanhauser, with
DAISA Capital Director Gustavo Mamao.

North Spore stands for a world of people consuming healthy and delicious mushrooms. During their work with the DAISA Capital team, led by Gustavo Mamao, the company’s founders got conscious on how the company impact thesis is related to some of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). The potential for mushrooms to be a key meat replacement – which has been one of the forces for plant-based alternative products – and all the scientific progresses into the health benefits of some mushroom species are key market forces driving North Spore’s fast growth over the last few years.

North Spore Sustainable Development Goals

FACING COVID-19 PANDEMIC
As any individual or organization of this planet at this point, North Spore has also been impacted by coronavirus health and economic challenges. On the one hand, the company is adjusting to some of its small farms’ customer demand decreasing, like local restaurants. On the other hand, the company's online sales are booming to address home growers' demand, especially due to the fact that people are spending more time at home and want activities to do during their spare time as well as guaranteeing their supply of food.

DAISA, through its special initiative DAISA Capital, is looking forward to move to the next project phase and start approaching patient capital investors in order to raise the right capital to allow North Spore to keep “spreading the spore” and supporting more farmers and people to have good food locally, and, sometimes, at home.

Take a look at the North Spore website: www.northspore.com

If you want to know more details about this project, or to consider investing in North Spore, reach out to Gustavo Mamao at gustavo@daisaenterprises.com

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PRESS RELEASE - DAISA ENTERPRISES SELECTED TO MANAGE CONVENING OF ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION GRANTEES

2/19/2020

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DAISA Enterprises, a food systems and community health strategy firm based in South Hadley, Massachusetts was selected by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to design and facilitate a convening of the Healthy Children and Families grantees for 2020.

The Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF) is the United States' largest philanthropic foundation focused solely on health; it is based in Princeton, New Jersey. The Foundation's goal is to improve the health and well-being of all in America." RWJF aims to advance policy, systems, and environmental changes that create the conditions to foster families’ opportunities to promote healthy child development. The Healthy Children and Families convening will be a forum for sharing learnings and leveraging insights among grantees, partners, stakeholders, and RWJF staff around strategies to achieve this goal and prioritize health equity. More than a hundred health leaders are expected to attend this engaging event in spring or summer 2020.

DAISA Enterprises works at the intersection of food, health, economic and community
development, building cutting-edge initiatives and enterprises. It has quickly established itself as a key partner to national health-based philanthropic foundations, helping them design and implement field-building events and programs.

DAISA CEO Daniel Ross expressed commitment to the mission and values of the HCF initiative, “DAISA is honored to support the work of RWJF grantees, help them connect and learn from each other, and build a greater movement for the health of children in our country. This is amongst the most powerful work we can do.”

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CULTIVATING COMMUNITY: A FIELD SCAN EXPLORING ARTS & CULTURE IN FOOD SYSTEMS

1/21/2020

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Clemmons Family Farm - Charlotte, Vermont

As part of their ongoing research to better understand how arts and culture play an intentional role in place-based community development, in 2018 ArtPlace America commissioned a field scan about the food and agriculture sector. DAISA Enterprises was selected as a research, facilitation, and thought partner to lead this work. DAISA’s deep food systems knowledge and consulting experience, including role as National Program Office for the Kresge Foundations’ Fresh, Local and Equitable initiative, made us a natural fit.

The research report - Cultivating Creativity: Exploring Arts & Culture in Community Food Systems Transformation - informs current knowledge and practice around how arts and cultural approaches can be better leveraged to create equitable and place-based food systems change across the country - spanning rural, tribal, and urban settings. Launched at the 2019 Artplace Summit, the field scan is contributing to building the fields of arts and culture and community development, informed by creative placemaking and grounded in the experiences of artists and community change-makers.

THE RESEARCH PROCESS
In what types of community-based effort is artistic and cultural expression contributing to food and agricultural outcomes? Research included examining grant databases of ten relevant federal agencies and foundations and identifying 180 projects integrating arts and culture with food and agriculture. Projects included community gardens & farms, community gathering spaces, community & incubator kitchens, culinary arts projects, food & agricultural tourism and celebration efforts, and food markets. Interviews with thirty-one food systems practitioners, artists, and field thought leaders from communities across the country illuminated powerful wisdom and lived experience:

“Art and culture is really compatible with the food and agriculture sector, because they are both really creationary. [...] Because you can approach agriculture from a systematic mentality that is extractive or you can approach agriculture from a perspective or mentality that is creationary and diverse. So bringing arts and culture to agriculture is a way to restore a more regenerative agriculture system.”
Lehua Simon, Artist, Mālamalama Maui Project

Desert Botanical Garden Spaces of Opportunity - Phoenix, Arizona

THE WORKING GROUP: TESTING OUR FINDINGS
In early March 2019, DAISA and ArtPlace - along with co-conveners Rural Coalition and Farm Credit Council - held a working group meeting to discuss initial research findings and to craft potential steps forward. A total of forty-one participants convened in Albany, Georgia, hailing from twenty-two different states, Puerto Rico, and the District of Columbia. Among the group were farmers, community practitioners, artists, community organizers, funders & financers, chefs, government and policy representatives, media, and academic leaders. Participants came from both rural and urban geographies, as well as numerous racial and ethnic communities from across the country.

The Arts, Culture & Food/Agriculture Working Group Meeting was held at Resora on Cypress Pond, a 1638-acre former plantation in southwest Georgia currently owned by black-led grassroots organization New Communities and operated as a retreat and conference center and a working farm. The space was chosen to host the Working Group meeting in order to honor the history of black farmer-led civil rights activism and to support New Communities’ mission of providing a restorative space for environmental and economic justice and racial healing.

Working Group Participants at Resora - Albany, Georgia, March 2019

Meeting participants heard inspiring work from three community practitioners - representatives from La Mujer Obrera, Wormfarm Institute, and Inner-City Muslim Action Network - presenting “Stories of Change” that brought to life the vibrancy of arts and culture-infused food and agricultural efforts. Participants delved deeply into the draft key findings to identify gaps and opportunities for refinement. Grounded in the power and beauty of the Resora farm, the group identified critical needs that exist to continue uplifting equity, social justice, and community healing through arts & culture-infused food systems transformation.

WHAT WE FOUND
The report reveals that arts-integrated food systems work provides a uniquely accessible and effective way to:

Bridge and heal divides
Drive equitable food oriented development and rural vitality
Transform community spaces and celebrate identity
Promote secure land tenure
Ignite creative, community-led processes
Preserve and reclaim food & farming traditions

What specifically about the intersection of arts and culture with food and agriculture allows for these powerful change-making processes to occur? We found that integrating arts and culture with food and agriculture enables a creative and inclusive visioning and planning process, and ensures community members see their identities, histories, and interests reflected in the work. Eating and growing practices often connect to the very center of who we are as individuals and communities. Food and agriculture both articulate with our connections to history, place, environment, sustenance, joy, and communion. Integrating eating and growing practices with creative reflection and action enables people to see themselves reflected in the work, and drives home the potential for personal and community change.

Utilizing creative placemaking strategies encourages community members to join their neighbors in identifying and creating relevant and innovative responses to local challenges. Creative placemaking that connects intentionally to food and agricultural practice provides a tangible and deeply interconnected way to drive food systems change and shape the future of a community. Community development efforts within the subsector of food and agriculture that lift up the importance of arts and culture provide a unique opportunity to improve quality of life in connected, meaningful, and equitable ways for community residents.

Thunder Valley CDC - Porcupine, South Dakota

WHAT’S HAPPENING NOW?
DAISA and ArtPlace have recently committed to further collaboration on disseminating these findings and recommendations to spark new and deeper partnerships between stakeholders in food systems, arts and culture, community development, government, and philanthropy. Through conference presentations, public webinars, regional briefing calls, and other targeted outreach, DAISA will advocate for the role of artist-practitioners and artist-facilitators and demonstrate the power and efficacy of arts and cultural practices in helping create equitable and place-based food systems change across the country. DAISA will also coordinate and support artists direct participation in typically food-focused conferences and is working with ArtPlace to design a Federal briefing for US Federal agencies which examines this intersection within rural communities.

TAKE ACTION
Read the field scan to learn more about the key findings, recommendations, and initial thoughts on evaluating the success of this work.

Share the field scan and brainstorm how to better support artistic leadership and creative practice in your network and community!

Stay tuned to DAISA’s blog and Instagram for future announcements of webinars, presentations, and other opportunities to engage with the research.

Visit the ArtPlace Agriculture & Food page to read case studies and also check out their other community development sector field scans.

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Equitable Food Oriented Development: A Justice-Forward Framework For Community Change

12/18/2019

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Local food ventures and healthy food access projects have gained considerable traction in underserved neighborhoods in recent years. However, many of these initiatives often exclude local residents in their planning, execution, and ownership; structures that can have significant negative health and economic impacts in these communities, and even exacerbate injustices. In response, a new framework of resident-led initiatives promoting equity in community-level food systems projects is emerging.

Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD), is an innovative approach that aligns food and economic development models, with an explicit aim of building community power. EFOD specifically helps historically marginalized communities maintain leadership, pride, and voice in their resident-centered food and agriculture initiatives; and ensures vulnerable communities can create food systems that reflect culture, promote health, and build community wealth.

EFOD organizations around the country have long sought to explain the transformative nature of their work to audiences that still see health equity, economic opportunity, and community leadership as distinct fields of practice. Beginning in 2015, organizations began meeting to discuss a research and evaluation agenda that would uplift the creation of community-led, food-based economies. Supported by visionary philanthropic leaders who saw the connection between community ownership and the success of place-based public health and economic initiatives, a formal group began to emerge - The EFOD Collaborative and Steering Committee.

Sankofa CDC - New Orleans, Louisiana, EFOD Steering Committee Member

The origins of the term “Equitable Food Oriented Development,” and the desire to articulate the vision of organizations using such a framework, reflects the importance of co-creation between practitioners and key allies in the health and development fields. After several months of EFOD Steering Committee meetings, research and drafting by DAISA, and building upon a white paper written by Dana Harvey, the following working definition of the EFOD practice was co-developed:

Equitable Food Oriented Development is a development strategy that uses food and agriculture to create economic opportunities, healthy communities, and explicitly seeks to build community assets, pride, and power by and with historically-marginalized communities.

In October 2019, the EFOD Collaborative along with DAISA, and with support from The Kresge Foundation, released Equitable Food Oriented Development: Building Community Power - a white paper based on fresh, new research that lays out the EFOD framework - its origins, defining criteria, and impacts. The paper also provides well-researched recommendations for sustainable field-building developed from years of community-based practitioner expertise.

Impacts and outcomes attributed to EFOD are distinct from those of traditional community development or food oriented development (FOD). While conventional food systems work may unintentionally cause harm to communities through gentrification, displacement, or extraction of local resources, EFOD instead fosters strong social capital networks, equitable asset development, increased civic engagement, and decreased displacement.

EFOD IN ACTION: THE POWER OF FOOD-BASED COMMUNITY DEVELOPMENT
Ashland Market & Cafe, a project of Mandela Partners (Oakland, CA)

“It was a very focused effort to work with community to determine food access gaps and economic development opportunities… through that process we were not only able to launch a community-directed project, but we also deepened our own connection with the neighborhood we serve.”
- Mariela Cedeño, Interim Executive Director, Mandela Partners

Long-time community organization Mandela Partners worked alongside local residents and stakeholders to develop the Ashland Market and Cafe, a 2,100-square-foot food hall, incubator, and community space on the ground floor of an affordable housing complex. The project was catalyzed in partnership with a resident-led advisory committee that eventually selected four local food entrepreneurs as the facility’s inaugural tenants. Ashland Market & Cafe vendors live in the surrounding neighborhoods and sell foods that reflect their heritage and family histories. To support and encourage community-based entrepreneurship, kiosks rental rates are kept well below market and tenants are offered business development workshops, micro-loans, and legal assistance. Ashland Market & Cafe was funded using an innovative, but cumbersome, mix of financial instruments including revolving loans, $360,000 in federal Healthy Food Financing Initiative funds, and $1.3M in public and private investments.

Ashland Market & Cafe, Mandela Partners - Oakland, California, EFOD Steering Committee Member

TAKE ACTION
Read the white paper and share it with your networks.
Visit EFOD.org to learn more about Equitable Food Oriented Development and the EFOD Collaborative.
Join the EFOD mailing list to stay up-to-date on happenings in the field.

The white paper was jointly produced by the EFOD Collaborative and DAISA Enterprises, with support from The Kresge Foundation. EFOD Collaborative Steering Committee members include Community Services Unlimited Inc., Nuestras Raíces, La Mujer Obrera, Mandela Partners, Detroit Black Community Food Security Network, Inclusive Action for the City, Planting Justice, Sankofa Community Development Corporation, La Semilla Food Center, and allies from Capital Impact Partners, Self-Help Federal Credit Union, and The Wallace Center at Winrock International.

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INCREASING HEALTHY FOOD ACCESS IN ‘NORMAL’ TIMES ENABLES SURVIVAL & RESILIENCY DURING AN EXTRAORDINARY CRISIS

NORTH SPORE: AN EXAMPLE OF A SUSTAINABLE FOOD COMPANY AND HOW THEY MAKE THE CASE FOR ENVISIONING A NEW FOOD SYSTEM

PRESS RELEASE - DAISA ENTERPRISES SELECTED TO MANAGE CONVENING OF ROBERT WOOD JOHNSON FOUNDATION GRANTEES

CULTIVATING COMMUNITY: A FIELD SCAN EXPLORING ARTS & CULTURE IN FOOD SYSTEMS

Equitable Food Oriented Development: A Justice-Forward Framework For Community Change

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