Category: EFOD

Listen Now: Podcast Series Featuring the Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD) Collaborative

12/23/2020

Over the last year and a half, DAISA Enterprises has been a supporting partner of the Equitable Food Oriented Development Collaborative (EFOD), a network of organizations and leaders using food to create economic opportunities and build community assets and power. This Fall, in collaboration with the Duke World Food Policy Center’s “Leading Voices in Food” podcast series, members of the EFOD leadership team spoke with host and WFPC Director Kelly Brownell about the EFOD Collaborative’s history and approach, highlighted specific community projects, and framed their visions for community financing through the paired lens of community wealth and health. The conversations span five episodes, which Duke released weekly starting on October 15th.

Photos: Rudy Espinoza, Inclusive Action for the City and Camryn Smith, Communities in Partnership

Each of the conversations touches key elements of the EFOD Collaborative’s work, which is driven by a critical need for communities themselves as the drivers of local economic development. The organizers featured in the podcasts say this in a multitude of ways. In the third of five episodes, Lorena Andrade of La Mujer Obrera in El Paso, Texas, describes how the work of EFOD is as much about defending community as it is creatively bringing new communities into being. Rashida Ferdinand of Sankofa Community Development Corporation in New Orleans joins Lorena in that perspective, naming how EFOD’s collaborative, equity- and community-driven nature enables the network to be a pathway for lasting change.

Photo: Neelam Sharma, Community Services Unlimited

2020 has been both challenging and dynamic for the EFOD Collaborative, which is excited to be underway with its first cohort of a pilot Loan Fund. The EFOD Fund, comprised of both grants and patient loans, will fund EFOD-aligned projects, while also providing comprehensive skilled technical assistance and facilitating a shared professional network in support of the inaugural cohort. EFOD leaders know the EFOD Fund can serve as an alternative model to extractive community financing, and see the Fund as part of a long haul toward disentangling financing from systemic racism. EFOD leaders will manage the loan fund, with support from financing allies.

DAISA is thrilled to support the EFOD team, and hopes you enjoy this thoughtful collaboration between the EFOD Collaborative, Duke’s “Leading Voices in Food” podcast and World Food Policy Center, and DAISA Enterprises. You can find the conversation and transcript for each episode in the 5-part series below:

Episode 1: Defining Equitable Food Oriented Development - EFOD 101
Neelam Sharma, Community Services Unlimited and Trisha Chakrabarti, DAISA Enterprises
Episode 2: Digging into Equitable Food Oriented Development
Neelam Sharma, Community Services Unlimited and Trisha Chakrabarti, DAISA Enterprises
Episode 3: Developing through Community Identity and Sense of Place
Lorena Andrade, La Mujer Obrera and Rashida Ferdinand, Sankofa CDC
Episode 4: Los Angeles and Durham Reimagined Through EFOD
Camryn Smith, Communities in Partnership and Rudy Espinoza, Inclusive Action for the City
Episode 5: EFOD Impact: Aligning Financial Support with Community Wellbeing
Camryn Smith, Communities in Partnership and Rudy Espinoza, Inclusive Action for the City

2 Comments

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

12/18/2019

2 Comments

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.

2 Comments

Listen Now: Podcast Series Featuring the Equitable Food Oriented Development (EFOD) Collaborative

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

DAISA Enterprises BLOG

Archives

Categories