This year the world will hold a Global Food Systems Summit, and MCLD is taking bold, collective action to emphasize that resilience starts at the community level. We hosted an official Independent Dialogue on May 19 – you are invited to watch the plenary sessions here.
We also invited leaders from our Movement members to write thought pieces, sharing successful examples of community-led food systems from across the globe. Please read and share these pieces, and help us keep the dialogue around community-led food systems alive!
- Farmers Spearheading Community Led Development in LiberiaBy Ian Smith* This article was originally published by Foodtank at this link. The Movement for Community Led Development in Liberia (MCLD-Liberia) is helping farmers address challenges with home-grown solutions. Through these efforts, they are working to empower women and youth and to ensure that international development in their country is driven by communities. In… Read more: Farmers Spearheading Community Led Development in Liberia
- Standing with small-scale producers at the World Bank Annual MeetingsDuring the World Bank Annual meetings in Washington DC on October 12, 2022, civil society and World Bank officials discussed ways to #ShiftThePower to small-scale producers. The event — Good Food Begins with Farmers: building resilience to prevent future food crises addressed the food crisis caused by climate change, conflict, inflation and COVID-19, which is… Read more: Standing with small-scale producers at the World Bank Annual Meetings
- Self-reliant action in LiberiaMCLD-Liberia reports it has recently mobilized its members for a series of self-reliant community-led action projects. In these recent photos, you see the graduation from the chapter’s Home, Business and community management program, and a community action program to build walkways to deal with flooding.
- Local Means Local: Community Leadership and Facilitation in CLDLocal Means Local: Community Leadership and Facilitation in CLD, a two-part multi-lingual learning event to share the findings from phase 2 of our collaborative research. We shared the key findings, implications, and recommendations from a Rapid Realist Review of 56 community-led programs.
- Monthly Global Call: Transforming Food Systems
- Key Takeaways from our Independent Food Systems DialogueBy Kristiann Koris and Anya Petranovic Introduction In September 2021, the UN Secretary-General will convene a Food Systems Summit as part of the Decade of Action to achieve the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) by 2030. In response to the Summit’s invitation for civil society participation, the Movement for Community-led Development (MCLD) is taking bold and… Read more: Key Takeaways from our Independent Food Systems Dialogue
- Food Systems For AllBy Tim Prewitt, CEO – The Hunger Project This year, the world is coming together to chart a path toward a more sustainable and equitable food system—a system that can meet the demands of our ever-growing population and is resilient to environmental shocks. Having spent my career working on food systems, I can easily say… Read more: Food Systems For All
- Shifting the Power: Sustaining School Feeding Programs through Active Stakeholder EngagementFeatured photo: Primary school students receiving a nutritious, daily school meal with USDA donated commodities from PCI’s McGovern-Dole project in Huehuetenango, Guatemala and commodities purchased by PTAs with funds from Guatemala’s Ministry of Education. Photo Credit: Project Concern International, a Global Communities Partner Written by Stephanie Gaffney, Technical Advisor for Integrated School Feeding and Sustainable… Read more: Shifting the Power: Sustaining School Feeding Programs through Active Stakeholder Engagement
- Community-led Food System Models: Self-Sustaining and Shock-ResilientFeatured Photo Credit: IIRR By Peter Williams, President, International Institute of Rural Reconstruction A stark global demographic projection, paired with the limited capacity to produce food at a low environmental cost, is cause for one of the most food insecure periods in modern times. The food crisis affecting more than 25% of the world’s population… Read more: Community-led Food System Models: Self-Sustaining and Shock-Resilient
- A Garden of Inspiration in BaltimoreBy Eugene Cho, President/CEO, Bread for the World Rev. Dr. Heber M. Brown III, the senior pastor of Pleasant Hope Baptist Church in Baltimore, Maryland, would not have expected the food system in the community to play such a large role in his ministry. But when he joined Pleasant Hope in 2010, he soon found himself praying with ailing members of the church beside their hospital beds. Diabetes and other chronic conditions related to… Read more: A Garden of Inspiration in Baltimore
- Transforming Food Systems Through Professional Farmer OrganizationsBy Casey Harrison, Livelihoods and Agribusiness Director, Nuru International Featured Image Caption: Genda Farmer Cooperative Savings Committee Meeting in Ethiopia (photo taken prior to COVID-19 pandemic) Localizing Professionalism within Food Systems Nuru Kenya, Nuru Ethiopia, Nuru Nigeria, and Nuru International view the merging of business professionalism and the local context as a necessary prerequisite for… Read more: Transforming Food Systems Through Professional Farmer Organizations
- Community action, levers of change: Reorienting more inclusive & resilient local food systemsAbstract: Food and market systems consistently evolve requiring astute management by suppliers to remain competitive. To meet this challenge, World Vision invests in smallholder farmer entrepreneurship. Through training, mentoring and technical support to networks of market actors, World Vision catalyzes food and market systems change through intergroup collaboration and market-driven intragroup competition, leading to a… Read more: Community action, levers of change: Reorienting more inclusive & resilient local food systems
- Outreach International: Mobilizing Resilient Community-Led Food SystemsBy Dr. Kevin W. Prine President & CEO, Outreach International Alongside our local program partners and leaders, Outreach International supports communities to organize and access the resources necessary to overcome their most pressing challenges. For many households, such challenges pertain to food shortages, and it is through processes that are community-led, driven, and owned that… Read more: Outreach International: Mobilizing Resilient Community-Led Food Systems
- Feminism and Food SystemsThe March global Zoom gathering of the Movement for Community-led Development featured special presentations by: Ritu Sharma, president of Radiant Advocacy and a member of the Steering Committee of the Coalition for a Feminist Foreign Policy in the United States. Learn more at this link, and scroll to the bottom to sign on! Joanna Veltri,… Read more: Feminism and Food Systems
- Systems Thinking for Community-led Food SystemsJohn Coonrod, PhD. Executive Vice President, The Hunger Project and coordinator, the Movement for Community-led Development, 31 March 2021 Abstract: The pandemic has shown us once again that our current, increasingly centralized food system not only fails to meet the basic requirement of ensuring year-round affordable access to nutrition rich food for all, it has… Read more: Systems Thinking for Community-led Food Systems