Proposal for Partnership with the University of Kentucky for W.K. Kellogg Foundation Grant: Field Building and Developing the Capacity for Sustainability of Community-based Racial Healing and Racial Equity Efforts

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Proposal for Partnership with the University of
Kentucky for W.K. Kellogg Foundation
GrantField Building and Developing the Capacity
for Sustainability of Community-based Racial
Healing and Racial Equity Efforts

• by
• Central Kentucky Council for Peace Justice
• Deadline September 30, 2009

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Bringing the Bluegrass Together

• Kellogg will support projects designed to
• Promote racial healing
• Mitigate the effects of structural racism and,
• Help to eliminate institutionalized and
  structural racism
• Seeking proposals from community-based
  organizations
• Will fund up to 400K over three years

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Bringing the Bluegrass Together

• Kellogg uses the Aspen Institute Roundtable on
  Community Change to define structural racism
• the system in which public policies,
  institutional practices, cultural
  representations, and other norms work in various,
  often reinforcing ways to perpetuate racial group
  inequity in every key opportunity area, from
  health, to education, to employment, to income
  and wealth.

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Bringing the Bluegrass Together

• CKCPJ proposes to focus on dismantling structural
  racism in our food systems
• Key components in project proposal
• Bolster community-based partnerships (existing
  and new) to dismantle barriers/inequities
  artificially constructed by race
• Offer alternative education (including college
  readiness support and resources) for vulnerable,
  marginalized youth in the Lexington-Fayette metro
  area
• Assure evidence-based analysis of levels of
  healing for all stakeholders in the project

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Bringing the Bluegrass Together

• Vision for the Institute for Food Justice
• To get fresh food and vegetables into areas of
  the communities of Lexington and Fayette County
  that lack them
• To learn about the interaction of food systems,
  communities and health
• To bond with youth and their guardians and
  families across cultural boundaries in a clear
  and common task

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Bringing the Bluegrass Together

• Institute for Food and Justice
• Identification and recruiting target audiences
• 9th-12th graders who need an alternative
  educational path and who demonstrate aptitude for
  leadership and creativity and their
  guardians/family and community members
• Power-holders in Lexington-Fayette County inc.,
  churches, schools, government, business, media
• Orientation to mission and purpose

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Bringing the Bluegrass Together

• Learning and Teaching
• Ceremonial commencement and regular opportunities
  for pageantry including music and art
• Personalized learning plans for students, peer
  mentors, guardians/families, instructors,
  University student volunteers and researchers
  that include improvement in leadership skills and
  tenets of empowerment
• Hands-on, problem-solving methodology in program
  centering on food systems
• Building community values/attitudes while
  learning about other cultures
• Digital storytelling

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Bringing the Bluegrass Together

• Exit Pathways
• Ceremony of voices of justice what has been
  accomplished and will still be challenged
• Capstone assessments for students,
  guardians/families, volunteers and instructors
• Referrals out (next steps for all, including
  students entering college or workforce)
• Digital stories recycled within the communities
  to keep the dialog going, e.g., radio shows,
  public service announcements

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Bringing the Bluegrass Together

• Institute teaching-learning focusing on
  Structural Racism and our Food Systems

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Infrastructure of Racism US subsidizes corn
imports to Mexico while small farmers pushed off
the land corporate control of seeds through
utility patents 45 of US seeds held by one
company top 10 companies hold 1/3 global seed
market
Healing Learning about Amer-Indian seed
hybridization/animal bloodstock land and forest
management irrigation systems religious
significance of natural resources African crops
and tools African-American inventions
seed, fertilizer, livestock, technologies
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Infrastructure of Racism Disinvested in
communities of color, e.g., communal Hispanic
ejidos outlawed, 60 of Black farmers lost their
land since 1910 75 of all farm workers in US
born in Mexico with lowest wages of all workers
and highest work-related injuries
Healing Learning about small farm ownership soil
sampling and clean water tool-making and caring
for farm animals safety and machine maintenance
aqua-culture agrarian communal practices, e.g.,
quilting bees, barn-raisings
Cultivation, harvesting animal husbandry
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Infrastructure of Racism Food processing plants
mostly employ non-White immigrant and Black labor
esp. in rural areas with unsafe conditions and
low wages X plastic produced in US is used for
disposable packaging
Healing Learning about art and craft of pots and
basketry canning, drying and other food
processing economics of bagging and boxing
foodstuffs for transport marketing and design of
packaging for commercial markets
Preparation of food and containers for marketing
and distribution
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Infrastructure of Racism Grocery gap
predominantly white communities have 3x the
supermarkets than black communities average
grocery store is 2.5x smaller in poor
neighborhoods and ½ the inventory is more
expensive than in an upscale neighborhood
Healing Learning about US transportation hubs,
free trade markets and global markets highways,
railways and airways farmers markets and
cooperatives parastatels and subtreasuries
African market queens and Amer-Indian pow-wows
Geography and economics of transportation and
food industry
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Infrastructure of Racism Average household
spends only 1/day on fresh fruits and vegetables
and labor costs comprise only 6 of total (so if
farm wages rose 40, then consumer cost only
8 more/year 50 in low-income families worry
about how to afford food
Healing Learning about health consequences from
obesity and correlation to food insecurity role
of ceremonial feasting in building community God
as food commonalities and differences among
cultural attitudes toward food
health, cultural choices, family and community
celebrations
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Infrastructure of Racism Health consequences
from toxic waste from mono-agri-business
landfills mostly burden communities of color
inner urban or marginalized communities tend to
have sewage and waste management of poor quality
Healing Learning about sustainable food systems
where clean water comes from recycling and
composting respect for life and taking only what
one needs (e.g., prayer before killing animal for
its meat and using nearly all the parts without
waste)
geography and economics of waste, recycling
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Digital storytelling keeps the dialog going
Pay-it-forward peer mentoring
Everybody learns from each other
Celebrating family and community
College readiness
Student leadership
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Bringing the Bluegrass Together

• UK and the Institute for Food and Justice
• Subject matter experts
• trainers for facilitating dialogs about racism
• survey construction and analysis
• focus group feedback analysis
• Researchers in every field
• Educators
• Guiding service learning projects for UK students
• Mentoring undergraduate/graduate researchers

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Bringing the Bluegrass Together

• UK and the Institute for Food and Justice
• Exploration of additional support in partnership
  with the Offices of Institutional Diversity and
  Community Partnerships
• Rent-free use of furnished office space and a
  meeting room in the former Northside library
• Rent-free use of 10 acres of land near the pond