In a very beautiful way the different streams of my life and work with art and Artists and creating a more equitable food system have grown together and overlapped, inspiring each other and creating new opportunities for community revitalization and growth. This work that I've done for so many years has always revolved around both areas, and just this past week I've seen how powerful creativity and art are when it comes to moving the hearts and minds of people to work together to create a community where everyone can thrive and experience abundance.
The project that I've written about before, Education = Power In Choice (EPIC), had the opportunity to create a logo as part of the work that we are doing to create a sustainable community based model that can be replicated all over the world. I asked the beautiful Artist Dana Gambale who created the logo for the Love & Plenty project if she could create the logo for EPIC. As I've written before, I began developing Love & Plenty in March of 2020 when the restaurants were first shut down during the health crisis to help the restaurants get funding to provide meals for people in need and hire back staff by creating a more sustainable business model, and it was the project that I had originally submitted to the Food Systems Game Changers Lab in 2021 which led to my being put together with a Cohort of people from around the world to answer the question of how to create a more equitable food system through education. EPIC was the solution we arrived at to answer that question, and after presenting our solution at the UN Food Systems Summit 2021 we were given the additional opportunity to apply for a Planning Grant to move our solution forward.
The proposal we submitted to create a pilot for a series of videos and a tool kit to help connect people in their communities to healthier food and nutrition education, food preparation skills, Chefs and restaurants, traditional and cultural recipes, local farms and urban gardens was accepted and the pilot and tool kit have been in the process of being developed. It's been a wonderful journey already of connecting in with local businesses, restaurants, Chefs and other equitable food system entrepreneurs and advocates, and then just the other evening I received the EPIC logo from Dana Gambale. When it arrived in my messages it was so wonderful that I couldn't stop looking at it. Everything about it made me smile and feel so happy. It reflected every part of the project that we are developing and brought our ideas and the feeling behind the work that we are doing to life.
There is a particular Chef whose heart for the community and the wonderful food he makes inspired the Love & Plenty project, and I shared the logo with him as he knows Dana and that the logo she had created for Love & Plenty was based on the way he serves his food. His response was immediate, and something in that logo sparked something in him and he offered to help with the EPIC project. I had been hoping and wishing that he would be a part of it, but his schedule has been very busy and he has been traveling so often for work of his own that though he's been very supportive and encouraging I didn't think it would be possible. But the impossible is happening and it's thanks to this wonderful logo and also thanks to some other wonderful Artists involved in this process. There will be more on that soon, but for now I'll leave you with this wonderful logo that makes everyone so happy when they see it. There's such a wonderful power in the creativity of Artists and Designers, that when put together with the hearts of others can make the world a more beautiful place for everyone.
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