Partners: East Denver Food Hub, Emerald Gardens
Group Members: Elias Berbari, Rico Foucauld, Mackenzie Faber, Camila Restrepo
Our food system has failed to meet the needs of food insecure households, and has structurally excluded beginner farmers of color from accessing the resources they need to thrive. The purpose of this project with East Denver Food Hub and Emerald Gardens Microgreens is to contribute towards their vision of an equity and dignity-centered food system that prioritizes economic justice, community wealth-building, and food sovereignty. The MENV team's primary task is to begin laying the groundwork for the broader systemic changes that they wish to see by building relationships with new and potential funders, farmers, and food access organizations, and communicating their partner organization’s vision as well as the value that they add to the food system. By the end of their project, they will have hosted a community engagement event and submitted a pitch deck, systems map, set of food sovereignty indicators, and final multimedia scrapbook to their Capstone partner. These deliverables will be both immediately applicable and continually adaptable post-project completion. To do so, they will use qualitative and quantitative methods including interviews with stakeholders, compiling data about stakeholder markets and operations, and mapping community assets and food dollars.