OAEC is excited to announce a new partnership with Celebrating Women’s Leadership in Food led by local farmer, author and activist Caitlin Hatchmyer. We are thrilled to support this project as Fiscal Sponsor.
Celebrating Women’s Leadership in Food grew out of the collective realization that while women grow half the food in the world, are the fastest rising demographic of new farmers and soil builders mitigating climate change in the United States, and conduct the bulk of the work in advocacy, we enjoy a low degree of acknowledgement. To address this disparity, the original intent of the project was to convene events to celebrate women’s leadership in food. Now in its fifth year, an important layer to this work has emerged: Not only is it critical for women to gather and be honored for their contributions, connect across difference, share resources, build community and create solidarity it is imperative that we invest in social movement building for women in food and farming.
By recognizing that women are both leading on the land and also breaking new ground in critical social and political spheres, we see an opportunity to build the social infrastructure to advance transformational change. This movement will allow us to nurture new forms of allyship across traditional divisions of race, class, and geography, change the paradigm of power structures and scaffold new forms of leading together to meaningfully address ecological crises and social inequity. By investing in this inclusive movement we will create unity across difference and grow power. Women will lead as the source for regenerating our social, political and ecological landscapes.
