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FRESH News Volume 1, October 2013 |
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| Dear FRESH Friends,
It has been a busy and productive year at FRESH, and there is a lot we want to share with you! Too much, in fact, for one newsletter; we intend to produce these much more frequently to keep our supporters, volunteers, participants and partners informed and engaged in our work and our organization. Please read below to learn more about what's new with us. With our big move coming up on Saturday, Nov. 9, there are lots of ways to help! Thanks for being FRESH! |
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In this issue:
- New home = big changes!
- Meet our new staff
- The campaign to change school food: Crew update
- FRESH Farm's abundant harvest
- A note from the FRESH Advisory Board
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A sneak peek at our new home: |
| | | | | Above: Our new home at 90 Garfield Avenue has large, shared space for youth work, plenty of office space, and something we've wanted to for YEARS: a large kitchen/classroom. Photos by Arnetia Douglas. |
| FRESH growth: New resources in support of our work to transform the food system This month marks the start of a campaign at FRESH to outfit our new home on Garfield Avenue and fund an assistant director/grant writer position to help us sustain our work into the future.
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| Plans for an Assistant Director Our staff of three nearly doubled this summer with the addition of an Americorps VISTA member and a part-time youth crew leader- their profiles are below - and plans for a third new position, a much-needed assistant director, in early 2014.
FRESH is beginning a campaign to fund an assistant director who will be a vital resource developer, a little bit of an office manager, and a champion of local food justice. We hope for a true relationship-building visionary who can help us build the capacity FRESH needs to educate and empower more people in and around New London. We have the job description posted on our website, and we have already received several inquiries.
Please share the link with prospective applicants!
The campaign is off to a great start, with a recent $25,000 grant from the Newman's Own Foundation, and we continue to seek further funding. Our goal is $60,000 to fully fund the position for a year; we're almost halfway there!
For further inquiries into our new assistant director position, email us, and a member of FRESH's board or staff will get back to you. |
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| Our new home office:
In the next month, we'll pack up our office at the Gemma Moran United Way Food Center. We have been hosted here 'in-kind' since 2004.
On Nov. 9 we are moving to a larger space shared with the New London Youth Organization (YO) at 90 Garfield Avenue. The building owner is donating the space, plus heat and electricity, to the project. Our new home includes a large multipurpose room, a computer room, and plenty of office space for our purposes. Most exciting, we will have access to a large kitchen, which will allow us to teach a new set of food security skills to youth: food preparation and preservation!
We are excited for the move and very thankful for all the United Way has done for us over the years. By allowing us to bring the furniture and computers in our current office with us when we go, the United Way continues to support our daily operation. Continued use the Food Center's walk-in refrigerator, essential to the smooth and efficient distribution of harvested produce, will keep our operations connected into the future.
To learn more about our new home office, email us and a staff or board member will get back to you. |
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| | Help us grow!
Visit our website to view our wish list (in PDF format) for our new office. We are happy to receive new and gently used items on that list, as well as most kitchen supplies, tools and equipment. Contact us!
ALSO: Want to lend a hand on Saturday, Nov. 9 as we move into our new office? Contact us to find out how. All our moving helpers will get lunch and a full tour of the new space on moving day.
- Donations from $15 to $99 will be used to help us with moving costs and the new monthly utility bills that come with the new office!
- Donations of $100 to $250 will be used to pay stipends and wages to the youth who work with us as community food security advocates and garden builders.
- Donations of $250 and up will become part of our Assistant Director Fund, a critical new position at FRESH which will help us grow our impact and make our efforts sustainable.
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Meet the newest FRESH staff, Maegan Parrott and Aly Shea |
| Maegan Parrott, crew leader, started September 2013
Maegan lives in New London with her husband Sean and two young boys, Orion, 5, and Khrysanthos (Khrys), 19 months. She also attends Mitchell College in New London. Before becoming FRESH's youth crew leader, she advocated for children's rights in the local education system through New London Parent Advocates. With the crew, she's focusing on empowerment and encouragement when it comes to their fight for healthier, better school food. She helps with individual and group-focused advocacy activities focused not just on school food, but strengthening the community. Their goal: a more sustainable agricultural food system for them, and for the generations after. |
| | Aly Shea, Americorps VISTA volunteer, hired August 2013 Aly worked in journalism in this region before she joined Americorps this summer to help her community. Her service year at FRESH is part of a dual placement with the Connecticut Food Justice Youth Corps, where she and the four other VISTAs at other food justice/community organizing groups statewide are sharing best practices and curriculum to improve youth programming and education around food justice. At FRESH, Aly has worked on capacity building through assessing FRESH's organizational strengths and weaknesses. She created databases of grant sources and past program participants, as well as this newsletter. After she finishes her service next summer, Aly plans to go to graduate school for public health nursing. |
| | | Fall youth crew focuses on improving school food |
| | Our crew members know their school food isn't good for them. They want to make it better.
Our youth chose school food as the focus of their fall campaign, and have spent weeks learning about the issue. They recently met with New London and Groton school food service directors, and in past weeks have created surveys to assess what students, parents and community members know, and how they feel, about the food served in their schools. In canvassing at our mobile market stops in New London, we have gotten important input about school food, and spread FRESH's name and mission within the community.
In the fall, youth do some farm work, but focus on advocacy. On Oct. 12 the FRESH crew marched in the CT March Against Monsanto in Mystic.
Youth crew member Stanley said the March Against Monsanto was his first experience being part of a demonstration, and he felt less shy being surrounded by others of similar passion. His sign, "Hell No GMOs," was inspired by what he's learned about genetic modification in food, or as he explains it, "putting stuff into food that's not supposed to be there."
"I didn't think a lot of people would be there, but there were a lot people," Stanley said.
Youth crew member Luis said he was excited to see how others responded to their passion.
"A lot of people cared. We had this sign, 'Honk for no GMOs,' and there were a lot of people honking," Luis said.
The next day, three FRESH Junior Staff members spoke about food justice and FRESH at the South Lyme Congregational Church's annual harvest fair. And last week they met State Public Health Commissioner Jewel Mullen when she spoke at Three Rivers Community College in Norwich.
These experiences help to shape new perspectives and fuel our continued efforts. Next up is Bioneers' by the Bay/Connecting for Change youth sustainability action conference in New Bedford, Mass this weekend. At this three-day event our youth will attend workshops and present our work as part of the YouthShare tent, which showcases youth sustainability efforts nationwide. We can't wait to share what they learn in our next newsletter, in November. |
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| | | | Top: Junior staff run a mobile farmers' market at the South Lyme Church's harvest fair after speaking to the congregation about food justice issues on Oct. 13. Middle and bottom: FRESH youth crew members pose with signs they made for an anti-Monsanto demonstration in Mystic on Oct. 12. |
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| | | From the Farm: Winding down a season of abundance |
| | Abundance has been a continuing theme this growing season. Since the start of our growing season in April, we have harvested 11,600 pounds of food from our 1.5-acre farm at the Waterford Country School. About one ton went to Waterford Country School through our landshare agreement. All the rest of our delicious food -- nearly five tons of fruits and vegetables -- found its way onto people's tables in New London through a Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) program that attracted 75 shareholders and hundreds of customers at our mobile market stops. The markets wrapped up this week, and the CSA wraps up the week of Halloween. |
| | Still, our most impressive abundance isn't in the weight of our food, but in the enthusiasm of our supporters. We couldn't have done it without the good work of our young people, volunteers, interns and visitors who helped strengthen the community and steward the land that feeds us.
This summer we increased participation in a farm intern program, bringing three college-aged youth to FRESH's farm and garden, teaching them to manage a farm and educate about sustainability. Our fall intern, Dan, is a Milwaukee native whose family raises dairy cows. He said he's enjoyed harvesting our locally grown produce, and helping with our experiment in raising cage-free chickens for meat.
"It cannot get any better than directly from farm to table!" he said of bringing home local food.
Our supporters this year included many new people. This was the first that we've expanded our mobile farmers' market to include low-income and elderly housing sites outside of New London. We visited two complexes in the city of Groton in July, August and September, and a complex in Norwich in September. We were greeted by enthusiastic crowds, and nearly sold out of veggies each time! |
| | From the FRESH Advisory Board: A year of change
It has been a year of changes for the entire organization, from the small (reorganizing board meetings to better address the needs of the organization), to the very big: FRESH's new, spacious, shared space on Garfield Avenue. While the word "change" can strike fear into the hearts of some, I can state unequivocally that every change that FRESH has undergone in the past year has been to the benefit of the work that FRESH does here in New London County.
These changes are really just beginning: FRESH will be soon be expanding our staff to include an Assistant Director, a decision rooted in the need to continue to expand FRESH's vision and mission. Simply put: we want to secure healthy food for all, and we want to grow our ability to instill love of fresh food in New London youth, and make the skills to use whole foods common in our community.
An Assistant Director is an essential ingredient in that plan. It is an exciting time for FRESH, and one we hope you will continue to be part of, as gardeners, as volunteers, and as supporters, financial and otherwise. We'd love to hear from you! -- Lisa Crowley, FRESH Advisory Board president since fall 2012 |
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