DAY 2 AFTERNOON DETAIL

from FEED BACK, Move Forward Summit Program

by craigardan

DAY 2 MORNING DETAIL

DAY 2 AFTERNOON

12:15 - 12:30pm BREAK // RESTORE

Gentle Twists, Tai Chi, Breath and Eye Relaxation (TaraMarie Perri) Booths and Networking opportunities remain open

12:30 - 1:15pm LUNCH WITH KAREN WASHINGTON

Q&A with keynote speaker Karen Washington

1:15 - 2:00pm AFTERNOON BREAKOUT SESSIONS

Breakout Session E: “Expanding Food Access amid COVID-19 and Beyond”

(Brittany Christenson, Krista Hesdorfer, Misha Marvel)

AdkAction will share lessons learned from its Emergency Food Packages project that helped to stabilize markets for farmers and provide fresh, nutritious meals and ingredients to families in need of extra food support due to the pandemic. After delivering over 65,000 meals, the program transitioned into a longer-term effort designed to outlive the pandemic. Now, families can purchase the Food Packages with SNAP benefits and take advantage of pricing incentives like Double Up Food Bucks and AdkAction's new Fair Food Pricing. Hunger Solutions New York will share the latest participation findings and actionable strategies to expand access to USDA’s undertapped nutrition assistance programs — including SNAP, WIC, school meals, summer meals, CACFP, and the new Pandemic-EBT program — during and beyond the pandemic, to alleviate hunger and inject millions of federal dollars into local communities in the North Country and statewide. Learn about ways schools and community-based organizations can leverage program flexibilities available during COVID-19, resources and best practices to alleviate barriers to participation, and upcoming opportunities for policy advocacy to strengthen our nation’s largest anti-hunger programs.

Brittany Christenson spent her early childhood in the redwood forest of Northern California and transversed I-90 as she got older; spending her high school and college years in the Rocky Mountains. She moved to the east coast for love and grad school — one of which worked out. After devoting herself to sustainable agriculture in her 20's, Brittany joined AdkAction as Executive Director in 2016. Since then, Brittany has led the organization to new heights, pioneering many new projects including the Farmacy, Emergency Food Packages, and Plein Air Festivals and significantly advancing others, including the Pollinator Project and Reducing Road Salt. She received her Bachelor’s degree in mathematics from Carroll College in Helena, Montana. She serves as the Treasurer of Keeseville Community Development Corporation, Coordinator of the Adirondack Road Salt Working Group, Steering Committee Member of the Essex Farmland Protection Plan, and Co-

Founder of the Well Fed Essex Collaborative. Brittany lives with the love of her life, Lucas, son Njorth, and daughter Lucia on 30 wooded acres on a dead-end road in Keeseville, NY.

Krista Hesdorfer serves as a Child Nutrition Programs Specialist at Hunger Solutions New York. She is a resource for organizations, schools, and advocates to increase awareness of and participation in federal nutrition assistance programs. She conducts statewide outreach, provides technical assistance, and conducts administrative and legislative advocacy to protect and strengthen the programs, with particular focus on summer, afterschool, and child care meal programs. She joined Hunger Solutions New York in 2016, following several years of working to connect families with SNAP through the Nutrition Outreach and Education Program.

Misha Marvel has been an anti-hunger advocate for over two decades working with a food bank in NJ and then communities in NYS to expand their capacity to provide their members access to affordable and nutritious food through USDA nutrition assistance programs. She joined Hunger Solutions New York in 2003 and has conducted outreach, policy analysis and administrative and legislative advocacy to strengthen and protect SNAP, SFSP, CACFP, and WIC. Misha serves on the WIC Association of NYS board of directors and lives in the capital region with her husband and two terrific teenagers.

Breakout Session F: “Workshare Warriors: A Non-Monetary CSA Model”

(Ann Bennett, Catherine E. Bennett)

America’s current cheap-food policies have led to the disconnection of communities, the foods they consume and the land and growers on whom they rely. Now more than ever, those connections must be rejuvenated and the farmers supported. Ann, Brian and Catherine Bennett of Bittersweet Farm in De Peyster, New York, have established the Workshare Warrior CSA, an entirely non-monetary program that works within a financially impoverished community. This program creates lasting connections and supports a small farm’s well-being despite the fact that many members could not participate financially in a traditional CSA. Members sign a standard CSA agreement, but instead of pre-paying a set price, they schedule a weekly two-hour time slot during which they come to the farm, assist with and learn about crop and farm production, and leave with a share of diverse farm products, from produce to meats to value-added.

In presenting their Workshare Warriors CSA, Ann and Catherine will discuss how and why they established said program, triumphs and pitfalls they have encountered, and how to implement a non-monetary CSA on your own farm, ensuring people of all backgrounds can become a part of the growing and eating of local, healthy food.

Ann Bennett began farming in 1985, after receiving her degree in photography. In 1999, she and her family moved to New York to farm full time, where she raised her two children while running what was then St Lawrence County's only certified organic transplant operation. She is currently striving to develop a non-monetary CSA and her own line of value-added, farm based products, Dragonfly Herbs. In her down time, she enjoys driving her daughter and husband insane.

Catherine Bennett is the plant-protecting, insect-hugging, passionate Soil Keeper the capitalists warned you about. On one hundred and fourteen acres, she strives to rejuvenate and restore native and endangered tubers, connect her community to the land, and teach others to do the same. She enjoys writing, eating copious amounts of heirloom popcorn, and working with her oxen.

Breakout Session G: “Weaving a New Narrative: Planting the Seeds and Stories for Our Regenerative Future”

(Blake Lavia, Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo)

The filmmakers and artists, Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo and Blake Lavia from the Talking Wings Collective, will discuss the importance of sharing stories of regenerative growth. While most of our mental space is taken up with looming (and present) catastrophes, we are rarely presented with constructive solutions to the current crisis. Around the world, there are countless people who are fighting and succeeding to create a sustainable and just future for their communities. In our region, and beyond, the people who are striving to create a food sovereignty community are an example of this transformative process.

All media and art is a form of storytelling. It is how we shape the world and the reality we live in, weaving our actions into a collective tapestry. Blake and Tzintzun will share stories that create a new narrative, a narrative that can fuel our struggle. They will illustrate their approach to media/art production, and give hands on advice about how everyone can tell/nurture stories of resistance and change.

Their presentation itself will be structured around millennia old storytelling traditions, and will invite ample audience participation/collaboration. Together, let us plant the stories of our regenerative future.

Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo (they, them, their) is a P'urépecha/LatinX/Mediterranean visual creator, media producer and organizer. Tzintzun views every artform as an act of storytelling, a tool to weave communities together. Their work is a humble attempt to tell the stories of a new shared reality; stories that can serve as bridges, linkages for the people who are fighting to create a regenerative future. In recent years, Tzintzun has collaborated with their art and life partner, Blake Lavia under the Talking Wings Collective.

Blake Lavia (all pronouns) is a multimedia artist and community organizer. Their art practice dances between filmmaking, writing, photography, animation and mixed media illustration. From documentary filmmaking to novel writing, their work focuses on societal issues, cultural memory and our current climate crises. In recent years they collaborate with the multimedia artist Tzintzun Aguilar-Izzo under the Talking Wings Collective.

Breakout Session H: “Who Cares for the Caregiver? Updating our Self- Care Practices”

(TaraMarie Perri, MFA)

Simple movement and touch are essential to our well-being. It is highly recommended that those interested in gathering for this breakout session also join in the 15-minute breaks — awaken/ gather/restore — offered throughout the morning program. Explore a mix of gentle stretching, tai chi, breathing coordination and eye care; each session will include different practices so attend all three for a full experience to take home. This session is open to anyone who serves as a caregiver, has recently been called to lend a hand, or has a loved one who is a caregiver and needs support.

Navigating boundaries and challenges in our family and work environments and experiencing drastic limitations on community gatherings and resources are some of the unexpected ways 2020 tested us, and how 2021 will continue to do so. Caregivers have been leading by example throughout. Our health workers, teachers, activists, community leaders, farmers, eldercare staff, mental health providers, holistic health practitioners, social workers and parents are experiencing unprecedented demands on their energies, time and skills. With an abundance of opportunities to serve driven by their vocation to do so, they are also encountering diminished access to the restorative time and personal care they desperately need for balance, rest and recovery to effectively continue their work. Increased levels of burnout, depletion and mental health imbalance are real consequences and a cause for concern. Together, we will gather with focused questions to grow awareness around this shift as it runs parallel to the pandemic. We will also explore how 2020 dismantled the systems and activities we trusted to rejuvenate our spirits, what new discoveries in creativity and work/life balance are being made instead, and why we are now collectively awakening to the need to step into the role of caregiver. How do we update old practices and include real and nourishing forms of self-care to benefit us, those who depend on us and our communities at large?

TaraMarie Perri is a teacher-practitioner of dance, performance, classical yoga, contemplative arts and sciences, kinesiology and holistic health therapies. For more than two decades, her research has been nurtured by interdisciplinary collaborations with performers, artists and makers in-studio, onstage and outdoors. She seeks out experiential learning environments which foster introspection, connections with others and living in harmony alongside the natural world. In addition to her new role at Craigardan, TaraMarie is faculty at New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts and maintains private practices in Brooklyn and upstate NY. Concurrent with her early years in performing arts and education, she worked in healthcare IT and observed the systemic imbalances embedded in healthcare. Around that same time, her personal path of Yoga study that began as a young adult had grown into a teaching vocation and dovetailed with her professional studies. In 2009, TaraMarie founded Perri Institute for Mind and Body to gather and mentor an international community of teachers and holistic health practitioners with the mission to increase awareness and guide access to supportive tools for well-being. The curriculum established a comprehensive educational environment integrating eastern and western traditions of practices with research opportunities in the arts, sciences and humanities. Graduates currently work with individuals and communities in medicine, women’s health, social work, physical therapy, childhood education, higher education, art therapy and psychology, among other disciplines. TaraMarie earned an MFA

in dance performance and choreography from New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts, a BA in liberal arts and visual arts history from The College of the Holy Cross, MA and performed professionally with ballet, modern, dance theater and theater/film companies in NY, PA and MA.

2:00 - 2:15pm BREAK

Booths and Networking opportunities remain open

2:15 - 3:05pm CLOSING KEYNOTE

Erin Watson, PhD: “Disrupting the Status Quo to Enhance Systems Change”

Too often the strategies we design to bring about systems change unintentionally take on some of the same qualities of the systems we’re trying to change. Avoiding this pitfall requires intentionally looking for ways to design strategies in ways that disrupt the status quo and lead to more transformative outcomes. This interactive session provides actionable ideas, real-world examples, and practical tools to help foster more creative, disruptive thinking for social good and systems change.

Erin Watson is the founder of Weaving Change, an evaluation and consulting firm helping communities to promote systemic equity through engagement. She received her Ph.D. in Community Psychology from Michigan State University. Her work centers on how organizations and communities can use systems thinking and participatory action-learning to design, implement, and evaluate transformative change efforts aimed at promoting equitable outcomes for children and families. She has consulted with and provided professional development to hundreds of organizations, public sector agencies, community coalitions, and foundations around their efforts to promote place-based change, service delivery system reform, strategic alignment, and collaborative capacity. Her systems change frameworks have been adopted by communities, coalitions, funders, and government agencies around the world.