The next meeting of the Dane County Food Coalition is scheduled for Thursday, March 28th at the Goodman Community Center from 8:00 to 9:30 am.
If you have a project you would like to feature or other suggested agenda items, please send me an email by Friday, March 22nd.
Carrie Edgar edgar@countyofdane.com
Happy New Year! The Dane County Food Coalition will meet on Thursday, Jan 17th from 8 am to 9:30 am at the Goodman Community Center.
Our agenda will include a presentation on the new Madison Sweet Potato Project by Meredith Evans and John Binkley. We will also have a networking activity and time to share good news and upcoming activities.
Hope to see you there!
Fri. Dec. 7th 7:00 pm
UW-Madison, Rm. 180 Science Hall (550 N. Park St.).
How to Save Rural America and the Rest of U.S.! Jim Hightower, the former TX Agricultural Commissioner and populist radio talk show commentator will address the current crisis facing family farmers and how the grassroots solutions could save all of America.
Introduced by Sarah Lloyd, Rural Sociologist and active member of Family Farm Defenders and the WI Farmers Union.
Hosted by the Madison Infoshop, FH King Students for Sustianable Agriculture, Family Farm Defenders, and others with generous support from the Associated Students of Madison (ASM).
Info? #262-9036 www.madisoninfoshop.org
The next meeting of the Dane County Food Coalition will be Thursday, Dec. 20th at 8 am at the Goodman Community Center.
The agenda will be sent out prior to the meeting. Please let Carrie edgar@countyofdane.com know if you have suggestions for this or other upcoming meetings.
The Dane County Food Council is hosting a Food Summit on Oct. 24th to celebrate National Food Day. The Coalition will not meet in October but hopefully everyone will be participating in the Food Summit. Please visit the Food Summit website to learn more and to register. Early Bird registrations ends on Oct. 15th so get yours in soon!
Our next regular Coalition meeting will be in early December. If you have a suggestion for the agenda, please contact Carrie at edgar@countyofdane.com or Laura at witzling@countyofdane.com
The next meeting of the Dane County Food Coalition is Friday, August 17th from 8-10 am at the Goodman Community Center.
Proposed Meeting Outcomes and Agenda:
The Dane County Food Coalition will meet on Tuesday, June 12th from 8 – 10 am at the Goodman Community Center.
This meeting will serve as the kick off for the Healthy Food for All project. It will be an opportunity to continue to develop a common vision for the Dane County food system and build our professional networks. Please see the note below from Chris Brockel for more information.
Healthy Food for All
With funding from the Goodman Foundation, Community Action Coalition is working in conjunction with United Way on a project to create a 10-year plan for increasing access to healthy food for low income households, with a special emphasis on children, in Madison and Dane County. We have assembled a steering committee of folks currently working in the local food system and have put together a year long work plan to look at different aspects of the food system as it relates to accessibility for low income households. Those aspects include: production, transformation/aggregation (processing/packaging), distribution, access (Food Pantries, FoodShare, WIC, Farmer’s Markets, Farm to School), and consumption (nutrition information, preparation, preservation). For each of these aspects we plan to hold a community meeting to convene interested parties in helping to describe the current system, identify successes, identify gaps and needed supports, and recommend action steps. While all these meetings will be open we are planning one meeting specifically to step back from these aspects and listen to the Voice of the Community.
Through these meetings, and our work outside these meetings, we hope to measurably improve collaboration between organizations working on issues of healthy food access, map the current food system as it relates to low income access, identify strengths and weaknesses in the system, create a vision for the future of the system, and create measurable goals and outcomes to achieve that vision.
It is with great appreciation that the Dane County Food Coalition has agreed to allow their next meeting to be the kick-off meeting for this project. At this meeting we will present our work plan for the year and describe the process we will use to get us to a final product. We will also be introducing our asset mapping survey. There will be plenty of opportunity for your input and involvement both at this meeting and throughout the year. As we go through this process we will need your program expertise, your ability to identify relevant research and data, and your eyes and ears to serve as watchdogs over our process to be sure we are as inclusive and encompassing as we can be without bogging ourselves down.
Chris Brockel, Food and Gardens Division Manager
Community Action Coalition for South Central WI, Inc.
608/246-4730 ext 206
Attached is a link for the press release announcing the Grazing Grants application.
The next meeting of the Dane County Food Coalition will be on Thursday, March 29, 2012 from 8 am – 10 am at the Goodman Community Center.
More than 30 community and organizational leaders who are working within the Dane County food system gathered for the second meeting of the Dane County Food Coalition on Feb. 16th hosted by Goodman Community Center.
The group continued planning for the coalition including mission & vision, structure, and communications. Check out the food coalition notes 2-16-12 for more details.
The group decided to use the word cloud made up from all the participating organizations’ mission statements to represent our mission at this point.
The next meeting of the Dane County Food Coalition will be March 29, 2012 from 8 – 10 am at the Goodman Community Center.
