Are your elected officials engaged on food and farm issues?

Are your community’s elected officials talking about healthy food access, food business entrepreneurship, markets for local producers, or the racial disparities in any of these opportunities?

Food-themed community forums can be an intentional space for your community to interact with and hear the opinions and ideas of candidates for elected offices and people working to improve your local food system. With a presidential election this fall, it is an important election year to bring attention to issues related to food, farming, and health with your community leaders and stakeholders.

WEBINAR: How to Host a Nonpartisan Candidate Forum

Carolina Farm Stewardship Association, Community Food Strategies, and Rural Advancement Foundation International – USA are hosting this webinar to help communities host their own candidate forums.

How to Host a Nonpartisan Virtual Candidates Forum Webinars

The content is designed to support your food council or community group in considering whether to host your own local food-themed virtual forum this fall. This webinar will be run twice with the same agenda, will be recorded, and posted here.

We’ll provide tips and tools to plan an in-person or virtual event featuring local candidates running for elected office and/or a panel of experts. Whether your event features candidates for office or not, we’ll provide tools that will allow your invited guests to engage in productive discussion and debate, as well as to respond to questions from your community about pertinent local food system issues.

We cover specific tips and considerations for:

planning these types of events in virtual formats,
how to keep candidates‘ events nonpartisan, and
how to create spaces that are inviting for community members and elected officials.

Join staff from all three organizations as we talk through the Community Food Strategies Candidates Forum Toolkit and the New England Food Solutions Forum Toolkit to help you plan. We will present a planning timeline template that includes the steps to start taking now to host your own forum event this fall.

Need Support?

Attendees of either webinar located in North or South Carolina are eligible for a free one-hour food forum planning consultation with staff from Community Food Strategies and Carolina Farm Stewardship Association.

Collaborate with Us on a NC Candidate Forum Series

Please let us know if you are interested in planning your own food forum event this fall! We would love to speak with you about the possibility of collaborating on a series of forums around the state that culminates in the state-level and Federal forums.

The three hosting organizations are planning a two-part series of virtual Federal and NC level candidates forums this fall. More information will be announced soon and we hope you will join us for those discussions.