Honoring Our Roots, Growing the Movement

CFJC in partnership with Food First took the lead as local sponsors for the CFSC conference to educate, organize, mobilize and support local community efforts to take back our food system. With over 1,100 participants  at this year’s Community Food Security Conference in Oakland and community members participating in our film festival, workshops at The California Endowment, Food Sovereignty Prize and Fair and other free and local events we organized in conjunction to the conference, we consider the entire conference a great success.

With the overwhelming positive response from this year’s community events, CFJC will be planning a People’s Summit in 2012 that will address food systems issues and provide an opportunity for grassroots community organizations and community members to engage on these issues.

Highlights from the Food Justice Conference Community Events:

Unique to this year’s Food Justice Conference, CFJC and Food First worked hard to incorporate our community into the food justice conversation.  This provided the highly critical need of allowing our community to partake in the discussion around food justice, regardless of their ability to attend the standard conference.  CFJC strives to continually find opportunities to reach underserved and marginalized communities.

Statistics show strong community involvement in this year’s conference:

→ 1,144 people attended the conference (including full, single day and event registration). Of these people, 46 US states and Washington DC, 3 Canadian provinces and 7 other nations were represented.

→ 31% of attendees received full scholarships and an additional 11% received a discount ($100 or more).

→ Free community events included the Food Justice Film Festival, Free Workshops at The California Endowment, Hunger Banquet, and the Food Sovereignty Prize and Fair.