I had some very good news this past week about a project I had submitted a proposal for. The proposal was accepted and awarded a grant to move forward, and because it's part of the project "Education = Power In Choice (EPIC): Empowering Communities Through Food System Education" which I've written about before, it seemed a great time for an update.
EPIC is the project that I began collaborating with a Cohort group from around the world on last year through the Food Systems Game Changers Lab. I had submitted the Love & Plenty project as an idea to the Food Systems Game Changers Lab and it had been accepted, and I had been put together with a Cohort to develop a solution to the question of how the food system could be transformed through education. Love & Plenty is the project that I had began developing in March of 2020 to help restaurants get funding to provide meals for people in need, and by the time I submitted it to the Food Systems Game Changers Lab it had grown to become a much bigger project and idea, to partner with or create a farm to table Chef's table for profit restaurant that would not only provide meals for people in the need in the community, but that would also be an educational site for teaching about food and nutrition and health and wellness, food preparation, culinary skills and provide hospitality industry training and mentoring. Over time as I met with the Cohort via online meetings, we developed a project together that incorporated all of our ideas and experience, and that is how we arrived at the place where we presented EPIC as a solution at the United Nations Food Systems Summit 2021 last fall.
As I wrote in my previous update about this project, I had begun to connect the Cohort with a variety of organizations in New York and New Jersey who were all doing work in the community around similar topics. And then we heard that there were Planning Grants that were being made available to us to help us move our solutions forward and assist in developing the partnerships that we had begun. There was an idea that I'd had when the restaurants were first shut down and community meal programs and projects that met in person for food and nutrition training could not longer operate as they once had. Because there is the technological ability to meet online, it seemed to me that one way we could continue to connect and meet and share food and nutrion education would be to use that technology to develop an online cooking show, partnering a Chef with a Nutrition Educator to share their knowledge in a fun, engaging, interactive and conversational way. I had spoken about this at the time with the Chef who was the inspiration behind Love & Plenty, because I had wanted to have him be a part of the nutrition and wellness and food preparation classes during the time I was developing a pilot program with an organization on the lower east side in 2019. He's someone who is very engaging on screen, and it seemed to me that we could do something online that could help connect people in a meaningful way around a topic that is so important, and bring a feeling of community and nurturing back when people were feeling separated and kept apart from one another.
We both did a few things online separately, but the project I had thought of together didn't develop, and then his restaurant opened again and we began hosting wine pairing and art lunches for Love & Plenty. When he left the restaurant in March of 2021, I wasn't sure what to do next because he had been such an inspiration for the project and I couldn't think of anyone who it would feel right to partner with. And then the opportunity to submit the project idea to the Food Systems Game Changers Lab arose, and that led to where we are now. I had begun to discuss the idea of a cooking show with one of the organizations I was in discussion with for possible partnership with the Cohort, and the idea focused around an online cooking show that would partner a Chef and a Nutrition Educator to incorporate nutrition and health and wellness and food system education into the food preparation and culinary training environment. As we began to discuss the possibility of applying for a Planning Grant, this idea seemed more and more as if it would be a great way to create a prototype model that could be replicated in other communities, and that with the experience the different partners had, including my own experience and contacts, we would have the resources we needed to create a prototype pilot that would be something we could then show to potential future funders in order to continue making these online educational videos that would also engage and connect community members around the areas of nutrition and health and wellness, healthy food, food preparation, culinary skills, agriculture, sustainability, and the local food system.
With the excellent help of the Cohort and local potential partners, I wrote and submitted the proposal for creating this prototype model and pilot, and last week we heard that we had been awarded the grant. With that exciting news we're now in the process of beginning our planning stages and next steps, and the vision for the project is moving forward into its next phase. Thinking back to the early days of Love & Plenty, when with the restaurants shut down we didn't know how to get food to people in need and had no way to do it except to find ways to deliver it, it seems even more extraordinary that the project has grown in such exponential ways that we're in this place now. By connecting together we can do so much more, and having the opportunity to work with the wonderful group of people in the Cohort and the Food Systems Game Changers Lab has made it possible to connect to other organizations and other people and to begin to deliver programs and projects in new and even more powerful ways.
Artwork by Dana Gambale
Love & Plenty
Love Created
Love Delivered
Love Shared
Love Multiplied
Blessings,
Jannie Susan
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