On January 23, Community Food Strategies team members and eleven food coalitions gathered on Zoom for the Roots of Resilience Community of Practice (ROR CoP) Kickoff—an 18-month journey focused on progressive food systems, racial equity, and community impact.

Cohort members shared which ROR CoP values resonated most with them, emphasizing how racial justice, equity, solidarity, collective care, policy, and advocacy are deeply interconnected. Through this discussion, the group established a shared understanding of how they want to engage in this work together.

The group also set community agreements, highlighting themes like speaking in rough drafts, being brave, taking risks, and noticing power dynamics. These agreements will help guide collaboration and accountability throughout the program.

Over the next 18 months, participants will apply strategies for social change in their local food systems using the 4R’s of Social Transformation—Resist, Reform, Reimagine, and Recreate (a framework created by Jodi Lasseter of NCCJC). One participant posed a thought-provoking question: “How do we become like the bees? How do we sustain the spirit of what we recreate?” These are the types of questions we’re excited to explore together.

At our Shared Gifting Learning session, the cohort was grounded in what we mean by “Shared Gifting”, they had the opportunity to break-out into small groups and start to think about their project proposals, and were invited to think how project based work, with the support of a community of practice, can help us shift towards justice-centered ways of being and doing. 

For Community Food Strategies, we believe that the Shared Gifting process offers deeper understanding of each other’s work, shifts leadership and power towards the people closest to the work and community, is an opportunity to practice value-based decision making and move towards a justice based process, and deepens relationships. 

We also believe that spotlighting how equity shows up in this process and practice is critical. So, we name and invite cohort members to reflect how equity is based in access, opportunity, and starts with an understanding that we all come with different advantages and disadvantages. 

On Shared Gifting Pitch day, we spent time learning more about each coalition and organization in the cohort; as well as, heard specifically about project proposals for Shared Gifting.

Each duo described their goal, what they plan to do and any additional partners they plan to do it with, and if the project is new or ongoing work. They also shared which of the 4 Rs their see their project in most alignment with and talked about how their work moves us towards a more just food system for their community. And finally, groups shared the dollar amounts they are requesting and detailed how the funds will be used. 

Throughout this process, groups are able to offer support to one another through encouragement, idea development on how to move towards justice based food systems within their projects, and consider how project based work, with the support of the community of practice, can help us shift towards justice-centered ways of being and doing. 

At this webinar styled session, the ComFoodStrat solidarity economics team:

1. Shared innovative approached that enhance local food infrastructure
2. Explored both new and existing solutions that prioritize community values
3. Offered case studies that highlighted solidarity economies and robust regional food networks

The cohort was able to meet in small groups to draft Regional Asset Maps that can be used in developing local value chains and regional food ecosystems. 

At this webinar styled session, the ComFoodStrat policy team:

1. Dove into the current landscape of food policy and its impact on communities
2. Explored effective strategies for advocating policy change
3. Reviewed best practices and case studies that inspired action

The cohort was given context about how policy impacts our food system and what advocacy opportunities can look like, as well as got a chance to talk in smaller groups about your policy power. 

We facilitated three coaching sessions this month. Our coaching sessions are intentionally built into our community of practice as times to support cohort members in integrating racial equity principles into their food systems work, deepen reflection on what’s emerging through shared gifting, and apply learnings from the monthly learning sessions. 

The Community Food Gathering is our beloved bi-annual conference that’s 2025 theme was focused on Transformational Community: A Way Forward. In that spirit, we created vibrant, inclusive spaces that celebrated joy, uplifted community voices, and re-ignited strong in-person connections with the intent to fuel trust, accelerate collaboration, and mobilize collective action across our network.

The Roots of Resilience cohort members showed up strong, participating as keynote panelists, workshop facilitators, and local welcome speakers.

We also hosted a gallery walk of the cohort’s journey so far – it was well received!

We facilitated three coaching sessions this month. Coaching provides personalized space to explore challenges, clarify project goals, and strengthen leadership. 

At this session, our facilitators introduced three methods for evaluation that rehumanize research and data through storytelling. The three methods explored were:

1. Story circles

2. Ripple mapping

3. Fishbowl dialogue

Each of these methods approach evaluation in ways that restore power to make meaning for those who the stories belong to.

Kicking off year two, the cohort gathered to deepen shared understanding of food as a cornerstone of community health, exploring its intersection with other sysems, and collaboratively vision what a healthy, food-centered community can look like in practice. Key take aways were: 

1. Food is essential, but not sufficient on its own for community health. 
2. Community health is at the intersection of food, housing, labor, land, policy, care, culture, and power. 
3. We can vision and co-create an ecosystem with community health and food as the anchor. 

Together, we named that health feels like – freedom, light, balance, joy, love, strength, clarity, and peace. 

This session focused on Shared Gifting Project check-ins. Where folks had an opportunity to reflect on their shared gifting projects with their colleagues and get feedback, if desired, on challenges, pivots, questions, and successes. 

Leaning into our shared values of accountability and building a culture of care, this was an intentional space to receive and offer support from one another. 

We had the great honor of hosting a panel with representatives from Poder Emma and Tierra Fertile Cooperative. They shared their wisdom and lived-experiences with creating cooperatives. From Poder Emma we learned about the their journey in building networks of businesses, housing, real estate, community councils, and cultural education programs. From Tierra Fertile Cooperative we learned how they are actively reclaiming knowledge, resources, and collective power for Hispanic farm-owners in Western NC. 

Through this session, we were able to hear stories about how cooperative and ecosystem building liberates us towards more community ownership and economic sovereignty. We left with a clearer vision and imagination of what regional ecosystem development is possible and what already exists.

Our last cohort session was focused on ways that policy work shows up in our work, how advocacy can be rooted in community power, and how grassroots organizing can help move us towards more just and resilient food systems. Two core insights were:

1. Mobilizing people power to contact elected officials, raise awareness, or demonstrate public support/opposition are effective drivers of change.
2. There is an important role of storytelling in local policy that can support envisioning and creating new cultural norms, ideologies, and stories based on partnership, inclusion, and interdependence. 

Our Community of Practice gathered together in-person, one last time to share stories about each others shared gifting projects, reflect on the cohort experience, eat meals together, and celebrate the commitments and relationships we’ve built over the last 18 months. 

While this closing session marks the end of this CoP, it also celebrates the lasting connections, deep learning and collective momentum that will continue beyond the cohort. The stories, lessons, and collaborations that emerged over the past year and a half are powerful reminders of what becomes  possible when people come together with a shared commitment to learning and action.