CFF Annual Gathering 2017

Thursday June 1, 2017

5 – 7:30pm

Project Farmhouse
76 East 13th St

Register Here (*required)

Co-sponsored by Philanthropy NY

[UPDATE: A recap of this event with photos and video is now available]

This year CFF is excited to be hosting our 5th Annual Gathering! Please join us to celebrate accomplishments from the past year and hear from your colleagues about different strategies being used to impact our regional food system.

New this year, we will be featuring the recipient of our inaugural Community Food Funders Champions Award, Soul Fire Farm! Click the link to learn more about the award and the winner.

Whether your focus is on nutrition or hunger, food chain workers or farmland preservation, emergency food or food waste, we all have a part to play in creating the just food system that everyone deserves. We encourage your attendance whether you’re a long-time CFF member or just entering the field of food systems change.

Join us at the CFF Annual Gathering for an evening of locally sourced food and drink, networking, and updates from the field. You can view pictures from last year’s Annual Gathering here.

2016 Annual Gathering

We are thrilled to be partnering with the new Project Farmhouse to host this year’s event, and to feature catering from the always amazing Cleaver Co.

Frances Moore Lappé
Frances Moore Lappé

This year’s keynote is Frances Moore Lappé, who is currently finishing a book called Daring Democracy (out this September) on the democracy movement in the US. She will be talking with us about tying democracy and the food movement together, as she has always said, “hunger is not caused by a scarcity of food but by a scarcity of democracy.”

Frances Moore Lappé is the author of nineteen books, including the three-million copy Diet for a Small Planet. Her latest work World Hunger: 10 Myths, coauthored with Joseph Collins, offers evidence that democratizing power, from the village level up, is key to ending hunger. With a focus on the roots of the U.S. democracy crisis and how Americans are creatively responding to the challenge, her current work includes the online Field Guide to the Democracy Movement and the forthcoming book Daring Democracy: Igniting Power, Meaning, and Connection for the America We Want, coauthored with Adam Eichen (Beacon Press, Sept. 2017). Frances is co-founder of Oakland-based Food First and the Cambridge-based Small Planet Institute, which she leads with her daughter Anna Lappé. The recipient of eighteen honorary degrees, Frances has been a visiting scholar at MIT and U.C. Berkeley and in 1987 received the Right Livelihood Award, often called the “Alternative Nobel.” Read Frances’ full bio here.

Leah Penniman
Leah Penniman

Soul Fire Farm will be represented at the 2017 CFF Annual Gathering by Leah Penniman, co-founder, educator, activist, writer, and farmer extraordinaire. Soul Fire Farm is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system. They began their work in 2011 to further regional food sovereignty through education and organizing on sustainable agriculture, spiritual activism, leadership, and justice for people from marginalized groups.

Leah will present about the work of Soul Fire, and the historical and cultural context upon which this work was conceived. She is committed to dismantling the oppressive structures that misguide our food system, reconnecting marginalized communities to land, and upholding our responsibility to steward the land that nourishes us.


More about our partners

Project Farmhouse grew out of the idea of creating a central location where New Yorkers of all stripes can get closer, to our food, to the land and to our neighbors.  Despite being the largest city in the U.S., New York does not have a center for environmental issues– such as we do for photography, or cultural heritage or art. As the impacts of climate change are apparent, a need for an international center for learning, discussion and action is critical. Project Farmhouse will give sustainability a platform for dialogue and action – the first of its kind.  A broad, dynamic range of programming will get hands dirty, plant ideas and foster healthier, greener decisions and actions.

The Cleaver Co. is New York City’s preeminent green caterer. We offer complete event planning services and produce a wide range of private, corporate and non-profit events. We know every event is unique and that catering is performance art. Our talented chefs and expert party planners work with you to create a personalized menu and setting that reflect your tastes and sensibility. Our seasoned captains and wait staff see to every detail so your event progresses seamlessly – leaving you free to relax and enjoy your guests. At 35, our core belief remains: food must delight the palate, please the eye and satisfy the conscience.
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