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- [Megan] Again, everyone welcome to our fifth session in our Food Security Summit. We will be starting promptly at 10:00 AM. I am just currently sharing my screen to give you information about the webinar and how we'll be using our Q&A feature during today's session. Again, we'll be starting promptly at 10:00 AM, and we'll look forward to chatting with you. So we all can continue to learn in this process together today. Again, thank you so much and we will be starting soon. Well, we're go ahead and we'll get started, Mary, if you're ready to join us. - Yes. Good morning. Welcome to the Northwest Food Coalitions Food Security Summit. My name is Mary Clulo and I chair the operating committee of the coalition. Thank you for joining us today. This is the fifth of six sessions in our summit, and I'd like to start off by asking you to do something to help our efforts. In the email you received with the session information, as well as in the chat box of this Zoom meeting, you will find a link to a very short questionnaire asking some basic questions, questions about your name, contact information and perhaps an organization you represent. I promise it's short. There are two questions that require some additional thought. One, being the role you play in addressing food security and the other identification in any gaps in our system of ensuring our region is food secure. You've heard a great deal of information throughout the summit, and we'd like to get some help on where there are opportunities to improve. We are trying to collect this information to create what is called an asset map. It will inventory all the resources offered by the participants in this summit, and then serve as the starting point for collecting information throughout our region about resources aiding food security. In our final session in two weeks, we will share that map with you, as well as provide you with the link to explore that information on your own. Everyone who participates in this summit plays a role and there is a place for every contribution in the map. Even if your contribution is that you are interested in this topic, we value that interest. So please just take the few minutes to complete those questions. Thank you. Now, in today's session we will really enrich the food security conversation by spotlighting the role of values. The coalition can confirm, our community values food and health. We see that demonstrated through the donations to our coalitions form to neighbor program, through business participation and support for the food rescue program and with the outpouring of support during the pandemic for our local farmers through our partnership with Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities whose fundraising efforts provided the coalition with funding to augment our local farm purchases for our pantries and meal sites. While values may define our priorities, we wanna consider the factors that drive policy decisions. Over the course of our past four summit sessions, you've heard about values such as having the right quantity of food. Access, not only to healthy food, but a variety of food to meet nutritional needs. About the roles of independence and self-sufficiency. And about the ability to provide care, compassion, equity, respect and dignity for our neighbors in need. During today's session, you will hear from probably the most diverse group of speakers yet to present, but who all play a critical role in the health of our community. We also are privileged to welcome a nationally known expert and author who will share his experiences and vision with us. We are presenting this Food Security Summit in collaboration with our outstanding partners, Michigan State University Extension, Food Rescue for Northwest Michigan and Groundwork Center for Resilient Communities. Rotary Charities of Traverse City provides financial support for this summit. Thank you to the individuals who work to plan and conduct the summit, as well as our presenters who are sharing their time and expertise with us. We'd also thank you for committing to improving the health of our community by attending this summit. Please don't forget the questionnaire. Now I'd like to introduce Val Stone, the Coalition Coordinator. Thanks. - Thank you, Mary. The Northwest Food Coalition is made up of many members from all walks of life. We have a mixture of faith-based, educational pantries, social services, mental health and non-profits. With 47 pantries and 24 serving meals, along with the baby pantries, each come with a different perspective and a way of distributing food. Many factors in our community affect participation and delivery of those services. Since COVID-19 there have been an influx of community members stepping up along with assistance from state and federal programs. I believe we are unique in this area with all the resources that we have. COVID has greatly affected employment, housing, childcare, and transportation. Each household has a story to tell. Today you're gonna hear more about the values and how they impact services and organizations. I'd like to introduce Megan Olds, the Owner of Parallel Solutions who will moderate and lead our sessions today. Megan. - Hi, Val. Thank you for that introduction. We're going to kick things off this morning with a video from the fair food network that grounds us in some of the values we're going to be hearing from our panelists today. (upbeat music) And now we'd like to know a little bit more about you and your level of awareness of values and their impact on our food system and services. So we have a poll, we'd like to invite you to participate in. You'll see this appear on your screen. You have a moment. We're just going to take about 30 seconds to complete this poll. The question is, "How aware are you of the way values impact community members food security and food assistance policies and services." A little over half of you have voted so far. Just take a few more moments here. All right, I'm going to go ahead and end the poll now and I'll share the results with you. So it looks like 45% of you feel somewhat aware, 30% moderately aware, 11%, extremely aware, 9% not at all aware, 5% slightly aware. Regardless of how you feel about your level of awareness today we hope the insights and perspectives shared by our speakers help you to deepen your understanding. And now I'd like to introduce the questions we posed to our panelists. We have four panelists and speakers joining us for the first part of our session today. And when we reached out to them we shared several guiding questions. They're each going to address the questions in different ways, but the questions we pose to them were, "What values motivate your community food security efforts? What choices do you make or behaviors do you practice that reflect those values?" And those could be related to a business model or policies or purchasing choices, communications and marketing practices or other criteria. The third question we asked is, "How do you measure success related to community food security?" And the final question was, "Have any of your values changed over time and why did they change and what happened as a result?" So those were the guiding questions. And I'm going to go ahead and introduce our first speaker and panelist here, Bill Meserve. Bill, if you could go ahead and turn on your video and I will go ahead and introduce you. Bill's joining us from California today. So this was a very early morning for him. Bill, thank you. Bill is a Pantry Leader with the Empire Food Pantry. He was raised in Michigan and he attended the University of Michigan. He spent his working life in California as a Rocket Scientist and Aerospace Engineer. And he was the Chief Engineer of a mid-sized aerospace company. His family has spent three generations on Glen lake and 18 years ago, he and his wife made that place their permanent home, their full-time home. And he was soon introduced to the Empire Area Food Pantry and took a leading role there. So Bill, we're excited to have you here today to share your perspectives and experiences. Thank you for being here. - Thank you. Good morning. I'm a volunteer with the Empire Area Food Pantry. We are a member of the Northwest Food Coalition. So I've known Val for quite a while. My job is to make sure that we have sufficient food in the pantry. This is kind of easy since we rely heavily on Food Rescue and Feeding America. I should explain that Feeding America is a part of Goodwill Industries. They have a small fleet of refrigerated trucks and contract with grocery stores to pick up food that they are taking off their shelf and they bring it to the many pantries in the federal city area. We get quite a variety from there. Feeding America is a series of nationwide warehouses. They get food from U.S. Department of Agriculture and/or buy food in bulk and offer it to the pantries on an online store. Our food from a Food Rescue from Feeding America, is tracked to Traverse City from the warehouse in Cadillac. And we are a small pantry located and serving Southern Leelanau County. We used to be part of Leelanau Christian Neighbors, a much bigger organization, but over 20 years ago we became our own pantry to focus on Cedar, Maple City and Empire and the Glen Arbor area. We're located at Glen Lake Church, which puts up with our taking over areas of the church a couple of days a week, and even more around the holidays. We're supported by five local churches for funding and volunteers. Now these are Empire United Methodists, Empire St. Philip Neri, Glen Arbor Bethlehem Lutheran, and Glen Arbor Christian Science and Glen Lake Church. We used to solicit two or three volunteers from two churches each week. But since COVID, for about a year, we've had a fixed group of volunteers who have established a safe working procedure and have committed to working one or two days a week. We have a group which receives food on Mondays from Food Rescue. We mark off barcodes and then decided to refrigerate, freeze or put on tables for food pantry the next day. We work in a certified kitchen. So do some repackaging if necessary. This usually takes one and a half hours for about six volunteers. On Tuesdays, pantry day, we have another crew, including some of the Monday crew we'll put out signs and cones to direct traffic to our parking lot, lists the various foods we have that day and make copies and get ready to package foods with our staples or from the Food Rescue tables. All wear masks and gloves, and this usually takes about three hours for nine volunteers. Southern Leelanau county is a wealthy area around Glen Lake, but there are low-income people and families. Some have low-income jobs or depend on Social Security or have simply run out of savings. We're also an area of high housing costs. The Empire Area Food Pantry believes that we have a call to serve the less fortunate and needy. We try to reach those in need through local paper notices and word of mouth (clears throat). We also get our name out there to the community through quarterly food drives at local grocery stores sponsored by Leelanau Democrat Party and Arts Tavern, an icon Glen Arbor collects food for us for three weeks leading up to its Annual Pig Roast. Last year, Arts gifted us with the entire proceeds of the Pig Roast and bar service (laughs) plus the contents of their donation jar. We're a small pantry as I said, serving 10 to 25 families a week, this swells to about 60 families for Thanksgiving and Christmas when we do special holiday boxes. We also fund Leelanau Christian Neighbors Blessings in a Backpack for Glen Lake School. We have no means requirements for our clients other than the United States Department of Agriculture need and maximum income form demanded by Feeding America. This is a requirement because some of their food comes from USDA. Since USDA food is intermingled with our other foods, we pass the requirement to all our clients. We operate on the premise that if you ask for food, you will get it. We try to have a welcoming attitude. It's harder now with drive-through service required by COVID. But before that families came in and were greeted by our volunteers and chatted with each other. Volunteers may sit with them as they wait for their food. And we have long-term relationships with some of these families. Some bring homemade foods for the volunteers. We've had jerky, venison, pasta salad, homemade bacon and the ever popular kimchi (laughs). Our goal is to make the pantry a non-judgmental space. We usually know our clients by name and treat them as individuals. For instance, we don't pre-package any food boxes. We give each client a list of our 40 stock staple foods and let them check off what they want, their choices or their boxed for them by volunteers. Meanwhile, they picked from food Rescue Foods. Before COVID, we had a large area of the church where we displayed all the food Rescue Foods and other foods, which were not our staples on tables and let our clients choose what they wanted. Currently, we're a drive-through and we cannot display the various foods often, including perishables we have. So we not only give them a list of our staple food, but two additional pages which lists the foods we have from Food Rescue and other donations from local farmers and gardeners. These foods are still spread out in one of the church areas, the volunteers take the list and fill banana boxes for the families. So a family will usually receive two banana boxes of food. And it's hard to believe there's so many banana boxes that we repurpose in the county. And if a family only has a microwave or is camping for the summer, we can tailor food for them. We work hard to be able to supply meat and other proteins to our family. When I started volunteering with the pantry, 16 years ago, we gave every family pound of ground beef. We bought from a local butcher. That was it for me. That fit our budget at the time. We saw the need for more. And when we joined Food Rescue and later Feeding America, we changed how we serve the community. Now most of our meat comes from Food Rescue for free and Feeding America at 18 cents a pound. We still regularly buy ground beef from local butchers. Seasonally, we get donations of venison and occasionally a pig. We think we supply our families enough choices of chicken, pork, and ground beef, and often Bennison eggs and cheese, milk and yogurt to last most of the week. We always have a few popular Heat and Serve prepared meals from Costco. You know what they are? From Food Rescue. We have increased our freezer capacity from one to three freezers and they are usually full of meat and leftover bread. Through much of the year, we offer fresh vegetables. Much of this comes from local gardeners or farmers and Food Rescue. And it's always a chore to move our kale and Swiss chard. It's hard to know how successful we are at meeting community food insecurity. With us and Leelanau Christian Neighbors and Benzie Area Christian Neighbors nearby, people should be able to obtain food. We don't know how many families are out there who have a hesitancy to seek aid. When we get a referral from someone or the church or school, we can deliver food to a family within a day. We have let the Glen Lake Church secretary know that we have a couple of volunteers who are usually available to help someone who might call and she can also open the pantry at any time for someone new who needs help. We also serve a number of families who don't have a car or cannot get to us. We have a volunteer who usually delivers to 10 or 12 families weekly. We give her a stipend for gas money. Our usage is slightly down since COVID when we noticed that some of our regulars were not coming, we made some phone calls to inform them that we were safely open. This had limited success, and our numbers are still down. We're not sure why this is, that maybe because of the government funding. But anyway, thanks for listening to our story. - Thank you much, Bill. Some of the values I heard you share, just to summarize for folks included, a call to service to those in need in your community. A focus on relationships, a value for fresh food including frozen. A choice in food, giving folks the choice to take what's good for them, including their cooking capacity and having a welcoming space with no judgment. And also sounds like you're addressing other community needs as well related to transportation. So thank you. Thank you for sharing your perspective today. We're looking forward to you joining at the Q&A section here in a little bit. I'm going to go ahead- - Thank you, ma'am. - Yeah, thank you, Bill. I'm gonna introduce our next speaker now. Andrea, if you could go ahead and turn on your video and microphone. Hi, Andrea. - Hello. So Andrea Romeyn is joining us from the Providence Organic Farm. She is the Co-owner and Marketer of Providence Organic Farm which was established in 2006. It's located in Antrim County, Michigan. And Andrea and her husband, Ryan and their team grow certified organic produce on over 25 acres. They raise pastured pork, small herds of belte Galloway, beef, and lamb with the help of their border Collie named blue. Other farm products are marketed through their CSA, through farmer's markets, through their online store and cafe and at wholesale markets in Northern Michigan. Andrea enjoys communicating with CSA members via weekly newsletters and hosting school tours and working the markets and hosting community classes on the farm. She loves focusing on nutrition and the joy of eating well to feel amazing. Andrea, we are so glad you're joining us here today, and I'm just going to kick things off by asking you the very first question, which is what values motivate your community food security efforts? - Well, Ryan and I have always strongly believed that everyone should have access to nutrient-dense foods and that our whole community strongly benefits from eating well, not just the people who can afford our fancy organic fair because let's face it to be a farmer in Northern Michigan and on a small farm at that, and to grow many different varieties of food is expensive. We have to have certain tools for every single thing and not just one tractor fits all and not just one implement fits everything. So, but anyway, we know that the human body is designed to run well, think clearly and fight disease and depression now. We know about this whole plant foods, a diet that's rich in plant foods fights depression too. So with the greens, fruits and vegetables are what I'm talking about. Also, I am a educator. I have a teaching degree from MSU and I was able, I had the privilege of teaching middle school and elementary school students. And then I went on to teach pre-school for 11 years. But I saw firsthand how the inability to eat fresh foods and have a good diet could impact learning outcomes. It really saddened me to see students struggling in class simply because they didn't have a diet that was rich in nutrient-dense foods. So I feel like poor nutrition led to poor learning outcomes, unfortunately. It's just so sad when you have these young children who you wanna have a bright future and the foundation of their learning is affected by the foods that they can't have. So anyway, that was a big motivating factor for me for making sure that more people had access to food. And then the other thing that we all know, is we all have family and friends that have succumbed to diet-related diseases, which is across all economic, right? It's just really just our culture and a lot of the things that we learned growing up about what's good for us. And also maybe a dislike or a distaste or maybe just not in a good education about good foods. But when it comes to our vulnerable communities, they only have so many dollars and they can't go to the grocery store and buy fresh fruits and vegetables and fill their bellies or their kids' bellies as well. So they tend to buy foods that are less filling and less expensive. I'm sorry, more filling, more calorie-dense, but less expensive. So Ryan and I always suspected, but now we're living in a time where there's many peer reviewed scientific studies that show that a diet rich in whole fruits, vegetables and leafy greens contribute not only to physical health in the prevention of many diet-related diseases like diabetes, heart disease and obesity, but to positive mental health. And if you are in a vulnerable population, mental health is extremely crucial to being able to go to classes and juggle your jobs and your life with your kids and have a healthy relationship with your parents and your spouse. It's just really crucial so that you can move forward in life and hopefully get the resources you need to have the wherewithal to fight for yourself and your family. - Great. Thank you. So it's so many values shared there, but overall just the value for nutrition, diet, health and overall wellness, including social emotional, intellectual, physical. - Yeah. - Thank you. So as you and Ryan run your business what are the choices or behaviors you make and how does that affect your business model or the types of things you choose to do or not do within your company and your farm? - So the belief in the power of healthy food has motivated us to share what we can over the past 19 years with area food pantries. So as you spoke of, we grow our organic vegetables. Now we're on about 30 acres. We have a large year round CSA membership and CSA farm that goes out, you know every month of the year. We attend five markets a week from June through October, but not only do we donate some of our own food, but we partner with area food pantries and two organizations, MANNA and the Northwest Food Coalition to sell our fresh produce at lower rates. So we give them the ability to buy from us at wholesale rates. So they kind of gauge what their clients want and need, and they come to us and they see what we have available and they purchase in large quantities which brings the price down for both of us, which is fantastic. We also have invited our CSA members and larger community to partner with us to send fresh CSA farm boxes to vulnerable families. So each year, people find out about our programs, more and more motivated to send CSA farm boxes to our local food pantry, which is just nine miles away. It's a Good Samaritan Family Services and they serve over 2000 people a month. So it's really important. As soon as we send those boxes out for Christmas, Thanksgiving, we have members who send out boxes on a weekly or biweekly basis, they're gone, they're gone within a day. So it's pretty amazing. We also have a few CSA members who choose a family and they just discreetly want to give up a box of nutritious vegetables to that one family every week for the whole year. So that's pretty much what we've built up to. And I hope to see that expand. - Thank you. And for folks who may not have heard of CSA before, can you give a quick definition of CSA? - Sure, it stands for Community Supported Agriculture, and a lot of farms who run CSAs have various formulated products. In our case, it's vegetables, eggs and meat products, but people usually sign up for a weekly or biweekly share of vegetables from our farm. And like I said, there's different kinds of CSAs, ours is vegetable focused mainly. - So how do you and Ryan and your team measure success related to your already efforts and your values? - Well, each year is our operation has expanded and we've begun to partner more with community organizations that deeply care about the issue of food security, we've seen an increase in the amount of food we are able to make available to vulnerable families. We've also seen an increase in our vegetables being used by the pantry clients, which is a big win. That means there's been an effort by various groups like Groundwork and Tastes Local Difference and MANNA and the Northwest Food Coalition. I mean, I think they're all working together to help people understand how good vegetables can be and how to use them, prepare them, make great recipes. It's just been really beautiful. And then just for our purposes, I always send, right in the box, there's a piece of paper that tells people what what the items are, how to store then properly so they don't go to waste and then delicious recipes that are simple and easy to do as well as a little more complex. So I just think it's been a win-win with all the education that's going on. So people value what's in the food pantry, the Swiss chard and the cow that was mentioned earlier, has actually been enough, which is fantastic. It didn't happen when we first started, it was just like, "Sorry, none of our clients are eating it." And now they are. So it's really cool. - Great. Thanks for mentioning that change. - Yeah. - Which leads us into our next question which is have any of your values changed over time? And if so, why and what was the impact? - So I would say that our values really haven't changed. That's kind of why we got into this in the first place. We were honestly, just... My husband was the main instigator of starting the organic farm because he felt a deep connection with the land, the soil, nature. So it wasn't to feed the hungry. It really didn't start with that motivation. So you could say that he wanted to do a job that he was deeply passionate about and he wanted our family and our community have access to nutrient rich foods, but right away we started being able to donate to those food pantries and grow over time, which is a great thing especially because like I said, as first-generation farmers it was very expensive to get into. But one of the things that I've learned and really clung onto over the past few years, especially, is partnering. That's amazing what you can do with a group of people that feel the same way. So I've educated our CSA members. I keep inviting them to share their resources and they want to, it's just, all you have to do is invite people. And everybody has their own things that they care deeply about. So it's always okay if somebody can't or doesn't feel particularly drawn to your cause, but just the simple act of inviting people to join in, has meant, I mean, by now thousands and thousands of pounds from our farm going to food pantries. So it's been really incredible and partnering of course, with Groundwork, MANNA, Northwest Food Coalition and all the players involved has been very valuable. So I think that's the biggest, is just how partnering together with everybody really makes it a difference. - Great. Well, thank you, Andrea. We really value your perspective. We're grateful you could join us today and I'm looking forward to your participation in the Q&A here in a little bit. - Okay. - Thank you. I'm going to welcome our next speaker, Beth Friend. Beth, if you could go ahead and turn on your video. Beth is joining us from Ohio today. Do we have to whisper Ohio? I don't know. - No. Exactly (indistinct). - I'm from Ohio originally, so I have a fondness for it, but (laughs). Beth is the Township Supervisor of East Bay Charter Township. She holds a bachelor's degree in economics and a master's degree in agricultural and natural resource economics from West Virginia University. She was elected as Township Supervisor in 2016 with over a decade of local government experience. Throughout these years, Beth has served on numerous boards and commissions, including terms as a Township Trustee and has a Grand Traverse County Commissioner. The Township Supervisor's duties are to manage and supervise public improvements, works and undertakings, to manage and be responsible for the Board of Trustees for the efficient administration of the township government and to serve as the Personnel Director of all the township employees. The supervisor is also the Chief Assessing Officer of the township and serves as the Secretary of the Board of Review, as well as the legal agent, developing the township's budget and appointing several commission members in concurrence with the Board of Trustees. Beth, we're grateful to have you here and thankful to have a local government perspective. I'll turn things over to you for your presentation. - Thank you, Megan. I'm so interested and excited to hear from Bill and Andrea, and humbled in following them. They've made such a huge impact that I hope that we can get some value out of our our limited and introductory impact of the township level. Hopefully Megan, you can let me know if you can see my PowerPoint presentation. - We can, we can see it. It's not in presentation mode yet. Yeah, there it is. Perfect. - Okay. All right. Great, great. Okay, so when I received the invitation to present regarding local units of government and their relationship and potential impact on food security issues, I'll have to admit at first I was initially perplexed. Did they have the right topic for a local unit of government? Did they have the right speaker? Are we involved in food security issues? And should we be involved in it? And then, you know because townships are traditionally involved in things. I mean, everybody knows voting that's through the clerk's office. That's where we, you know go to vote on local, state and federal elections. The supervisor's office, as Megan mentioned is over the assessing for the township. So the valuation of property, so that we have an equitable tax system throughout our area. And then of course, collecting taxes. And we don't just collect taxes for the local unit of government, we collect property taxes for every taxing authority that collects property taxes. So school districts, libraries, transportation initiatives, road commissions, and so forth. But when we really started to... And of course, additionally, we're known for our roles in planning and zoning, enforcement of ordinances and emergency services such as fire and an ambulance and community police officers. So every pun intended, we have our collective flights full. However, when we were taking a look at this, how can we do more? How can we make impact through cooperative efforts not traditionally falling under the local units of government's authority. And as I looked at food security and the measures that local units of government can take, I was heartened to find out that East Bay Township is making or planning to make impacts related to those food security issues. The township is tangentially involved in food security issues through three measures, utilizing its facility through inter-governmental cooperation. And in supporting and facilitating the delivery of Senior Citizen Food Security Program so that they have access to nutritional food based sources. And we are developing a farmer's market which envisions a accepting WIC and SNAP and other food assistance programs. And we're planning and searching for funding mechanisms for a community garden. So I'll tell you just a little bit more about each of those. The Northern Michigan Action Agency uses the townships meeting room to register participants for their CSFP which is their food program security for senior citizens. And they use our meeting room to register their participants and our parking lot to distribute the food items, and you can see in that lower left picture there. Actually, the day that that drone photography was taken coincidentally, you can see the food truck in the left side on the access drive to the rear parking lot. And you can see a line of cars lined up to that truck. So that would be after they registered then the food truck comes a little bit later and then they go out to their cars to line up and access the food distribution, and then about their way for the day. I was out there just about two weeks ago, and you can see that on the bottom right picture. And now on my screen, I have to say, I think that you're seeing the full PowerPoint, I have some of mine covering the picture, but on the bottom right picture you can see just two weeks ago in all of the snow we've had. This is still going on and it's still going on during COVID. The only adjustment has been is they don't use the meeting room, they do accounting and the paperwork in a different way, but the food collection is still going on at the township hall. And there's more than the day I was there in that bottom right picture. The cars were just, it was a complete circuitous system. There were always a dozen cars in that line and it was just kept moving through. So they're serving quite a bit of the senior population through that program. Now, noting that the township had some excellent access with that parking lot, as you can see we have the rear parking lot and the front parking lot that has a nice Securitas route. And also looking at the location that we're at Hammond & 3 Mile. We started to think about how else we could improve and develop the sense of community in our township. And so we've been pursuing a micro farmer's market. So micro market is defined as five to eight vendors, and we envisioned vendors with only with fresh produce, fruits, vegetables, because, you know that is the essentials that we would like to have every part of the community have a convenient and routine access to. So while we're targeting the general population with the consistent day and time, we will seek to aid those at risk of food security by applying to accept WIC, SNAP and other food assistance programs. So we're really looking forward to that. There is a Michigan Farmers Market Association and they actually have a certification program and we are in their current certification program. As a matter of fact, it is ending just this week. So we're looking at bringing that market to the township as soon as this year. And it would be June through the end of September program. So that that'll be, I think, exciting for us. And we've had a lot of positive feedback as the word of this has gotten out. Now, the third area was the developing of a community garden. So this was developed through the Michigan Association of Planning. We received a grant award which provided technical planning assistance for identification and planning of a township initiative. The township and the grant awarded consultants focused on the development of the community garden and while various other townships properties were considered. So we have many of you might be familiar with we have 30 acres over there with a water tower on Hammond Road. We also have some property South the township off of Garfield. So some areas that would work for community garden, however through the analysis process, it was really centered on the Township Hall property, as we do have property there. And it was chosen due to its current infrastructure for irrigation, bathroom facilities and a parking structure already in place. So that obviously cuts down on the cost of initiating that program. Additionally, it's well situated with the library, and the library has had a seed garden at their main location and which we would intend on working with them to bring to their satellite library and East Bay Township. And then we also have four different schools representing three school districts with thousands of children going to school there every day. So quite a big school campus at Hammond & 3 Mile Road area. We have worked and we'll continue to work with the stakeholders of the Traverse Area District Library, TCAPS, the other school districts of Grand Traverse Area, Catholic schools and Grand Traverse Academy and MSU extension and the development of these plans. And right now, the parks commission and a community garden subcommittee are currently researching funding opportunities and operational methods for this community garden, which could really be a deep, not only growing the vegetables, also a learning center so that vegetables can be grown elsewhere as well. So let's say back to my original thoughts of are we involved in food security? Maybe unknowingly many are, we were. How did we become involved in that food security? Literally, just because we were asked. Townships really do seek to build a sense of community, positively impact their residents. And as local governments are asked to provide, we always seek to do so if at all possible. It really stems from, you know our core values of townships, which are your most local form of government, is we seek to build on one, to provide things both effectively and efficiently. And I really love this little diagram that shows the difference between effective and efficient because so many times we'll use them interchangeably and you know, effective is really, you know doing the right things. It's not so much efficiency, but that we achieve the outcome that we wanted and efficiency which is really in that partnership allows us to do that is we can put in a more minimal effort and achieve a greater outcome. So we're doing it in the right method. So we can do it with the least amount of resources possible. We try to do things both ways, and as well on the right it also shows one of our core values is local government. And we try to achieve this on a daily basis at East Bay Township is how we work collectively, cooperatively, bring people and issues together, building on each other's strengths and abilities. So many times where we may not have the ability to do something, another agency has that responsibility through statute. And by working together we can benefit from each other's strengths. So these core values suit local government's involvement with food security issues very well. And I know I look very much forward to seeking additional impacts that local government can do and instituting those at East Bay Township and also in sharing our impacts to other local units of government. So I really appreciate this opportunity to share and actually to discover what we were doing and the tangential relationship that we have and the impact we might make on food security. Thank you so much, Megan. I appreciate the opportunity - Beth, we're grateful for your leadership and we're thankful you were here today and we appreciate your work related to food security and township governance. Thank you. - Thank you, Megan. - I'll introduce our next speaker here. Kori Woodruff is joining us. Kori, you can go ahead and turn on your video, please. Kori is a Nurse Practitioner currently practicing in the Munson Heart Failure Clinic at Traverse Heart & Vascular. Her professional nursing vocation began in 1993 as a registered nurse. After several years in practice, Kori earned her master of science and nursing degree from Duke University School of Nursing and is certified as an Adult Nurse Practitioner. She has experienced working with the diversity of specialty care populations and healthcare systems over the last 27 years. Kori is dedicated to patient-centric holistic care with a focus on improving cardiovascular health of individuals and families. She has a special interest in nutritional health and wellness, culinary medicine, and food insecurity as a contributing factor to chronic diseases. As an active member of the St. Francis Health Ministry, she works with a team to promote healthy habits to support physical, mental and spiritual health. Kori has a passion for cooking that extends from creating and enjoying meals with their family to recipe sharing with patients and finding opportunities to serve nutritious foods and form nourishing connections within the community. Kori, thank you so much for joining us. - Thank you Megan so much for having me today to be able to share through the lens of a healthcare provider. Our personal values shape who we are as providers, and my personal interest in food insecurity stems from strong family and faith values that I have incorporated into my nursing profession. I was fortunate to be raised in a family that valued shared meals, home cooked foods and fresh vegetables from our own garden. And serving food and helping neighbors was a regular part of life within our family or a parish or a community, and this has influenced my motivation to address food insecurity in the community. When I look at some of the values that form the pillars of nursing and health care they include caring and compassion for others, respect for human dignity and equality. The healthcare community strives to deliver evidence-based, high-quality, equal accessible and cost-effective care to our consumers. We need to continue to strive for equal access to nutritious food. Hunger and food insecurity contributes greatly to medical conditions and elevated healthcare costs. Food insecurity is one of the most significant social determinants of health in the United States. Chronic stress from physical, mental or emotional stressors can lead to chronic inflammation which contributes to the development of chronic disease. Our health outcomes data that we received through Groundwork reveals the connection between chronic diseases, health conditions and health behaviors associated with food insecurity. We see coping mechanisms use to stretch budgets that can lead to decreased adherence to prescribed medication regimens, missed visits or delayed care, and a reliance on cheaper high-energy but nutrient poor foods and unhealthy lifestyle behaviors that limit the ability to achieve an optimal treatment plan. Included in these conditions, but not limited to are key risk factors for heart disease which is my area of current focus, such as hypertension high cholesterol, smoking, diabetes, obesity unhealthy diets, physical inactivity and excessive alcohol use. Heart disease is the leading cause of death for men, women, and people of most racial and ethnic groups in the United States. About 655,000 Americans die from heart disease each year. One person dies every 36 seconds in the United States from cardiovascular disease. Healthcare utilization costs are impacted by food insecurity through increased ER referrals, hospitalizations and the cost of chronic disease management. When we look at the burden of chronic disease on the U.S. economy, we are looking at total costs of $1.1 trillion in 2016 and higher if we look at lost economic productivity. I have seen the impact of food insecurity on the health and disease states of my patients and within a community. And this serves as another motivator to be part of a solution. So, "Let food be thy medicine," is a guiding principle when it comes to health and healing, that was practiced by our ancestors and still widely used in many cultures today. Though our food industry and policies have moved away from this, the trend back to real food among many in our society has been growing for some time and some never left it. Personally, and as a family, we value supporting local food, home gardening and learning how to contribute positively to the soil health and the environment. We strive to incorporate healthier options for our community services and our school-related activities as well. As a provider, I feel it is important to educate patients regarding how food impacts their disease processes. My focus leans toward prevention and how dietary modifications can change the trajectory of their disease process. And this is often in combination with disease modifying medication therapies and more advanced disease states. Knowledge empowers people to choose more nutritious food options, in response to that question, "Now what can I do about this?' when they're faced with a healthcare diagnosis or an illness? Through my dietician colleagues and culinary medicine training, I am learning how to better approach the subject of diet and nutrition with my patients by forming that connection and being aware of the cultural implications of food, reviewing cooking and meal prep tips, budget-friendly nutritious choices, and through recipe sharing, I found this to all be of more benefit than to just giving the instruction to eat better which can be pretty confusing for all of us. Through these conversations, I've been able to identify more subtle barriers related to food insecurity. For example, a patient mentioned she was on the SNAP program as I was reviewing options for her weight loss and nutritional support. I was able to identify other resources in the community such as the MSU Extension and their "Cooking Matters" classes. And now they're not holding them live, but it was something I was able to connect this patient too if she had the ability to sign on at this point and attend or to look at that in the future. In our heart failure program, we review self-care behaviors frequently at phone check-ins and at every visit as self-care is vital to the successful management of heart failure. This allows us to review what barriers to care may play a role with each patient, such as they're not taking medications, why is that? Is it related to costs? Is it related to depression? Is it related to trying to stretch things out in their budget? Are they making poor dietary choices and why? Are they missing appointments or postponing diagnostic studies due to costs? Our in-patient services include facilitated referrals based on initial screening for issues. We do see a primary care provider offices and pediatricians. I do have screening tools for food insecurity. However, as a specialty clinic, we do not really yet have a similar system and our referrals are based on provider or the nursing identification of needs. Incorporating the hunger bio science questions into our nursing intake form in the outpatient setting maybe a value that we could look into. And how do we measure success related to food insecurity as a provider? I think at this point in my practice, it's rather informal. Reviewing self-care behavior improvement or improvement in the biomarkers or self-reported stressors. We could look at improvement in health outcomes data when that's available and look at have we been successful at coordinating appropriate referrals to more fully addressed the issue. It may be difficult to determine if we see an impact in the health care utilization costs related to food insecurity as these classes are multifactorial. I would say from my idealist perspective that success could be defined as every individual meeting all of their nutritional needs and being free from chronic diseases and the stressors tied to food insecurity. My values have evolved from education and addressing the knowledge deficit to identifying individual barriers to nutritional food and addressing the coexisting conditions that are related to food insecurity. Addressing these factors can help us understand and bridge that disconnect between recommended and achieved therapies. There's often a reasonable explanation as to why adherence is limited. So as a provider, how can we be part of the solution? Forming a trusting relationship to have open conversations with our patients, being mindful to addressing the combined effects of food insecurity on health, including that psychosocial impacts and effects on interpersonal connections. We can better identify the needed resources and referring those patients to those in the community that can best address those needs. We can educate ourselves regarding the impact of food on our health, our soil health and sustainable environmental practices, as a first step. One of our cardiologists, Dr. James Fox was instrumental and joining efforts with many individuals and organizations in this area to bring culinary medicine training to Traverse City. And by attending that, we can connect with experts in these fields and provide direction and how we can best educate and support our patients. Food prescriptions, I would love to see that in our practice. Some practices are already involved in the fruit and veggie prescription program. And I think patients may welcome receiving a prescription for a food rather than a prescription for another medication. Right now, we're in the early stages in our practice of potentially incorporating more nutritional interventions through a partnership with Groundworks and Shake Up North we're having a readiness survey related to nutrition that's upcoming in the next couple of months. And I hope that this will help direct our needs to better identify food insecurity within our practice as well. In closing, we have a duty to create plans of care that will optimize health. We need to seek opportunities to support availability and access to nutritious food for all. I believe providers and other members of the healthcare community are in a prime position to team up with this network of individuals and organizations that are already doing so much to address food insecurity in our community. I look forward to strengthening these connections following the summit. Thank you. - Thank you so much, Kori for sharing your values in your practice both personally and professionally with us. we're really grateful for your participation here today. I'm going to go ahead and invite the rest of our panelists and speakers to join us back on the screen. We do have one question from our participants today and I'm curious if any of you can answer this question. The question is related to maintaining a community garden. Any tips on how to successfully maintain a community garden? This person says, "As a volunteer coordinator, I've found it difficult to maintain a regular staff of working volunteers in this area." Do any of you have experience with community gardens or we're working with volunteers and motivating and coordinating them, would like to share some tips? - So Megan, I would just add a little input. It's not exactly an answer to your question, but as you heard, we are planning on a community garden. And one of the reasons the planning is taking quite a while is because we want to implement something that is sustainable. So we don't want a garden that is going to, in two years time, five years time sit idly by, look as though it needs a tremendous amount of maintenance, not have consistent programming. And so the two pieces that we're trying to put together of course are the funding, but actually the funding I think is probably a smaller issue than really how do we continually facilitate the operations of that? - Great, thank you. Anyone else have a tip to share related to community garden development or sustainability? - Val, I'm wondering, I think some of our pantries have community gardens and maybe what we can do is commit to reach out and post something online to fast assistance there. - Thank you, Mary. Great suggestion. And I know there is also a Grand Traverse Area Children's Garden that is volunteer-run, Kimberly Cardigan manages that, and she may be a good resource for folks in the community as well. - And also we have a large garden at the corner of 3 Mile and Garfield, they use all my volunteers and they give to pantries and other organizations too. So we may be able to get some insights from them. - Great. Sounds like a good data gathering effort. It looks like there's also some information being shared in the chat by Kevin Summers. You would be interested in that information. - The Empire Food Pantry is a beneficiary of Buckets of Rain, which is a broader organization, but they have a couple of local community gardens that bring food around to several of the pantries. How they do it, I think it's just based on volunteers who are passionate about maintaining the garden and I suspect they're, like me, retired people who have the time to do it and perhaps a small amount of funding, but this has been going on for quite awhile so they've been able to keep this running. - It sounds like there's a lot of passion around this topic. I'm seeing more questions, both in the chat and in the Q&A. So this might be an interesting topic just to dive into for future discussion. And it sounds like some partners are being listed there in the chat too. So thank you for that excitement and interest everyone. I think we have addressed all of the questions that were in the Q&A. And I would like to just thank all of you again, as speakers and panelists for joining us. It was wonderful to hear all of your diverse perspectives, the experiences you've had and the things that excite you and motivate you in terms of your values and your passions. We're really grateful for your leadership and your work in the world including related to food security. So thank you for being here today. I'm gonna go ahead and introduce our next speaker now. We are very grateful to have Oran Hesterman joining us. Hello, Oran. - Oh, Good morning. - Good morning. Oran is the Founder and Chief Executive Officer of the Fair Food Network, which is a national non-profit pioneering multi wind solutions that increase access to healthy food in our most underserved communities, support farmers and stimulate economic activity. The Fair Food Network signature program, Double Up Food Bucks, which has been mentioned in some of our previous sessions, has become a national model for healthy food incentives. Before launching the Fair Food Network, Oran led the W.K. Kellogg Foundation's Integrated Farming Systems and Food & Society programs. During which time he ceded the local food system movement with more than $200 million in investments. Prior to his work in philanthropy and non-profits, Oran researched and taught origin cropping systems management and sustainable agriculture at Michigan State University Extension. He's a former fellow in the Kellogg National Fellowship Program and the National Center for Food and Agricultural Policy in Washington, DC. And he's published more than 400 reports and articles on subjects ranging from crop rotation to the impact of philanthropy on food systems, practice and policy, as well as trends in the good food movement. He currently serves on the board of a number of national and Michigan-based organizations and businesses including the Food Corp, Five Acre Farms and the Groundwork Center hosted here locally. He has 35 years of experience as a scientist, a farmer, a philanthropist, a businessman and educator and advocate. Oran, we are really grateful to have you here today, sharing your stories, your perspectives, your data, and wisdom with us. Thank you so much for being here. - You're welcome. Good to be with you, Megan. - Well, the first question we're curious to know more about from you is, you know, from your perspective, what are the core values? You know, these could be beliefs or traditions or social codes that shaped the way our public programs or policies operate? These could be related to SNAP, or WIC or other commodity food provision. What can we observe about these programs and what does it tell us about values and motivations? - Yes. Great questions. And I like to go back to the history of some of these programs to think about what some of the values are, why they were created in the first place. So most of us know that the SNAP program, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program was created as something called food stamps. And for many years, that's what it was called. It was actually established in 1939. And I wanted to read a little quote from the Secretary of Agriculture in 1939. His name was Milo Perkins, and here's what he said, "We got a picture of a gorge with farm surpluses on one cliff and under nourished city folks without stretch hands on the other. We set out to find a practical way to build a bridge across chasm." So there was something in the creation of the SNAP program that was really about building an a very important bridge, a bridge across rural and urban, a bridge across a farmer and consumer, a bridge to those who were in need of food and who were hungry. And it was very interesting because it was conceived as a way to do it through the market-based system. So through the system that was already there to supply food, you know to people. It's very interesting to kind of follow the track of what has happened with the SNAP program over time because a program that was really supposed to be a uniter of mutual benefit has not always looked like that. There are times where we have seen this program pit people against each other, pit one group against each other. You know, I think about, for example, during the 1976 presidential campaign, candidate Reagan coined the term, welfare queen. And when that happened, it's sort of like it became a dog whistle for folks who were temporarily or for a period of time needing to have assistance from the government, whether it was SNAP or welfare or something else. The Food Stamp Program started morphing into a divider among people for some people. And it's interesting that we know through demographic studies, that the majority of people that participate in the SNAP program are white. Yet the perception, the stigma of the family or individual that's receiving SNAP benefits is often seen as someone who's a person of color. So it really also has become at times a weapon in what is really, some would say is the most vulnerable wound we have in our society and that's racism and racial issues. So we have to understand that the SNAP program can get caught and at times has been caught right in the middle of that issue. It has really at times morphed into a divider rather than a uniter and a bridge builder. Now what's interesting is just the moment we stand in right now where the COVID pandemic just this year, it's a crisis that's really opening up an opportunity that allows us to see this safety net of food security through SNAP quite differently. So many people have been pushed to a precipice of vulnerability that had not been there before. In fact, that the fastest surge in SNAP enrollment in history since 1939 has occurred in the last year. And just to put some numbers on it, it's numbers that have just been released by the federal government. But right now the SNAP program, if we look at the amount of money per month going into this program, it's running at about $120 billion per year. And that is up from 55 billion a year ago. Over a 100% increase in the amount of money that we're spending on SNAP, and it's not because the benefits have been increased that much, the benefits have been increased temporarily 15%. It's because of the number of people who in our qualifying because of this historic rate of unemployment and lost income that has happened because of COVID. So really, this COVID pandemic is I think offering us a really unique moment that can cause us to think about and reevaluate, how we can emerge stronger, more resilient and start to see programs like SNAP, once again, as bridge builders. Something that can help the farmer and help the family in need that is both rural and urban. Just other thing I'd like to say about the SNAP program is in terms of its values, is if we look at the politics of SNAP and where it sits in the federal sort of political conversation while it is a food assistance program, it is governed by what's called the Farm Bill, the large omnibus agricultural legislation that is reauthorized generally every five years by Congress. And it's actually the largest single part of the Farm Bill if you look dollar wise that it dwarfs everything else. About 85 and now close to 90% of all of the money we spend as a country, all the federal dollars in our food and agricultural system, 85 to 90% is going to food assistance, most of that going to SNAP. So it's really the largest agricultural program we have in the country. And one of the reasons that we have the support of this SNAP program even at times when welfare has been reduced, where many other parts of the safety net have disappeared, SNAP has not. And it's because you have a confluence in the political world between the politicians who represent rural districts and farmers and the politicians who represent largely urban districts and low-income families. And they sit together on the agriculture committees in Congress and they negotiate and horse trade. And it's like, "Okay, we're gonna get money for specialty crops. We're gonna get money for crop insurance. We're going to get money for research and extension. And we're also going to get money for food assistance and food stamps." And the SNAP program really can be still justified as it was in 1939 as a builder of bridges. So that we're supporting farmers and families both at the same time. The last thing I want to say about SNAP, and you know Kori, I listened with interests at the presentation you just made about like thinking of ways that we can assist and inform some of our families who may be patients. So in your clinic, I'm hoping that you have information about Double Up Food Bucks. And if you don't, I want to get it to you because that is a fabulous program. It really helps those who are receiving SNAP benefits to stretch their food dollars in a healthy direction, because every dollar they spend of their SNAP money on fresh fruits and vegetables they get an additional dollar to spend on fresh fruits and vegetables. And we try to focus that program as much as possible on locally grown. So we are even more directly supporting farmers and families at the same time, even than the SNAP program. So, you know, I think we have a a great opportunity right now at returning to the values that were here when the SNAP program or the Food Stamp Program was first developed. This value of connection, the value of building bridges between communities and among people. And so that's my hope is that moving forward, we're able to do that even more so than we have in the past. - Great. Thank you, Oran. What a great metaphor, building bridges. And thank you for building that bridge back to Kori's presentation too. I appreciate that. - Yeah, absolutely. - The next question we're curious to learn more about is, you know, what are the core values that you see that shape most non-profits? And these could be churches or food banks or pantries, what values are motivating the way they operate and what can we observe about these programs that reveals their values? - So, you know, I mean, we've heard some of that already this morning, but I think, you know, the value of service and the value of a community are really important to many of us. Those values are expressed in many of the kinds of programs and projects whether it's food banks, churches, food pantries. You know I know that that I am motivated again, much like Kori, I'm motivated by my own background. My Jewish background that has as its one of its tenants something called Tikkun olam, which is repair of the world. And that we are invited and commanded actually that we participate in that, that we spend our time, that we realize part of the reason we are here alive on this planet right now is to help repair what needs to be repaired. And, you know, there's no doubt that the food system needs repair. And whether we look at situations like we're talking about today with food security, whether we're talking about environmental damage through the agriculture and food system, whether we're talking about the way farm workers are treated, whether we're talking about places that are called food deserts because there's no or little access to healthy food, whether we talk about climate crisis and what to do about it, food and agriculture right in the middle of all that. So there's lots of opportunity for repair work here. But I think it's important when we talk about these values especially as it relates to our work at Fair Food Network, and it goes back to my work at Kellogg Foundation is thinking about how do we define food security? That, you know, there are some programs and non-profits and organizations that look at the issue of food security similar to the issue of hunger. So that if a family is hungry, they're food insecure. And that is true, but if all we're looking at is the issue of hunger and thus saying our job is to provide calories no matter where those calories come from and what form they take to that family, my belief is that we're missing out on huge opportunities because we have to think about the helpful aspects of food related to food security. And I believe we need to think about the social justice and economic justice aspects of food as well. Who benefits from it, when food is donated to food banks? Who's benefiting from that donation? And really looking at it as the way the whole system is working, not just the point at which a family is picking up that food to bring home. Now, it's a really tricky issue because when a family or kids are hungry, I mean we can't see people go hungry. That would be inhumane to to be callous to that. At the same time, if all we're doing is providing food at that emergency moment, and we're not thinking about how we are going to reimagine and reconstruct, reinvent our food system so that's not necessary in the future. We're gonna be constantly working to figure out ways more and more and more to get people a handout of food, which is not a sustainable solution. So what I think about hunger and food insecurity I don't think of it as a problem to be solved. I think of it as a symptom of a system that simply is not working well. And it's not working well for a lot of people. It's not working well for a lot of our small farmers. And we know that in the Northern Michigan area it's a very tough way to make a living, is farming on small acreages and it's not working for many small food businesses, and it's not working for many families increasingly that are having to line up at food banks or sign up for SNAP. So my value and belief in all this is that we need to reimagine and reinvent a food system. We need to reinvent a food system that addresses all of these kinds of issues at the same time. You know what I think about is rather than working to solve a problem, let's work to reinvent a system so the problems have a chance to dissolve. So at Fair Food Network, we're always thinking about where are our win-win wind solutions? Where are the solutions that we can create or support or pilot or scale up or advocate for? Where are those solutions that are going to address many issues at the same time? And that's why we love to support and help grow the Double Up Food Bucks Program. You know, it's supporting hungry families in a healthy direction. At the very same moment it's supporting local farmers. At the very same moment it's keeping those food dollars whether they're SNAP dollars or Double Up dollars in the local food economy to create jobs and economic activity in the community. And so we believe we need many more of those kinds of creative and inventive solutions that are gonna help these kinds of problems dissolve in including food insecurity. You know, I guess one more value I wanna raise is that we think about these kinds of solutions, I think it's really important that we value the wisdom and experience in communities that non-profit organizations can take many different forms, shapes, sizes, locations. Some are very grassroots located in communities. And some like Fair Food Network are really working nationally helping to spread programs and address policy through advocacy work. And it's really important for organizations like ours to stay very closely connected with community-based organizations and families in communities that we are here to engage with. So that as we imagined solutions for the future these are solutions that are really rooted in the experience and wisdom in the community. And that's a value we try to practice at Fair Food Network and I think more and more non-profits as we move forward are doing the same. You know, the problems we face are really daunting. We all know this. And our belief is that food has an out-sized power to address many of the problems that we are facing. And I believe you opened with the video today of "Why Food" which, you know, very succinctly says that why food? Is because whether you care about environment, education, workers issues, nutrition, hunger, we have an opportunity to address all of these issues through food and our food system. - Thank you, Oran. You mentioned social and economic justice, and I'm wondering if you could tell us a little bit more about the distinction between the values of charity and social justice and how those efforts are reflected in ways to address food security. - Yeah, that's a really good question because you know, I'll go again, back to my time at Kellogg Foundation where, you know my job was to review proposals that would come in and then based on those proposals, you know help make recommendations at the foundation where money should go. And you can imagine, you know, we were the largest program at that time in food systems in the United States. So we would get lots of proposals coming in and had to make tough decisions. And we oftentimes thought about a project or a proposal or an organization through the lens of, is this money considered as charity or is it considered as something that has an opportunity to change the system toward more social and economic justice? And at Kellogg Foundation, we made the decision that we were going to opt on the side of systems change versus opt on the side of charity. Now it doesn't mean that charity is bad. It doesn't mean that nobody should do that, but it was our assessment. And it is still my assessment that if you look at the number of dollars in our food system that are going in the charitable direction, it far, far outweighs the number of dollars that are going into programs and organizations that are working to actually shift the system so that hopefully we can reduce the need for the charity in the long run. So there really is, I think a fundamental difference in the value set there. And it's not that one is right, or that one is wrong, but that we need a balance. We need to be able to do both. If all we're ever doing is charity, we're never gonna get to the point where we're shifting the system so that we can be less concerned about having to feed hungry people. And on the other hand, if all we're doing is putting our resources into systems change, they're gonna be a lot of people today and tomorrow going hungry which is inhumane. We can't do that. So it's all about finding that balance between charitable model and assistance change model and that that's oversimplified because there are certainly some models in some organizations that are doing both and they go across the spectrum. - Well, thank you, Oran. We're very grateful for your time here today and for you taking the time out, out of what I know is a very busy schedule to join our summit. Is there anything else you'd like to share with us? - You know, just that again, of all the daunting challenges that we have, I think there's no greater challenge and no greater opportunity than being able to work for change in the food system. And I'm really so pleased that you've been able to gather so many folks in the region to think about it, to address it, to work together because none of these problems are issues that are going to be things we can solve by ourselves, we all have to be working together on them. So I really thank you for the opportunity and the honor to be with you today. - Well, thank you again, and I'm going to go ahead and summarize things here today by sharing some of the values that I heard our speakers and panelists share. And then we're going to ask all of as participants to share your values with us as well. Some of the values we've heard folks share today and I'll just start with Oran. I think the idea of repairing the world or reinventing the food system was an expressed value. Of addressing hunger, of looking at health and healthy food as a need, feeling a call to service, equity, and access. We heard speakers share value for education, for dignity, for partnerships, for effectiveness for efficiency, balance, listening, relationships, quality of life, respect, choice in food, welcoming and no judgment, addressing additional needs that are also part of the system of need like transportation, respecting the wisdom in communities, science and looking for win-win wins. We wanna hear now about your values. So we have a final poll here we'd like to share with you. You're going to see it in the chat function this time. So if you go down to the chat you'll be able to click on a box. This is a Wooclap connection. So you'll have an opportunity to click on in the chat box. You'll see a link there, a web link that's http//wooclap.com/foodsummit. If you click on that link, it should open up a browser for you, and you should be able to type in some words, a word or words to share your core values. What's driving your actions to address food security? After you type in your remark, you'll see it appear and this will create a little dynamic word cloud for us. So we'll be able to see which values are represented within our virtual room here, and by the size of the letters and the words we'll be able to see where those shared values might be. So go ahead and take a minute or two to share your core values and one word that drive your actions to address food security. It's wonderful to see all these words popping up. Some of our large words right now include justice, nutrition, equity, compassion, dignity, service, income. It's wonderful to see some new words popping up like root causes and honor, vegetables, system change. Go ahead and just take a few more moments here to type in some words, if you haven't yet had a chance to do so. It's like equity staying big and bold right in the middle there. Collaboration, fairness, family, nutrition, health wellness. Great. Well, thank you. As we've done with past sessions, we will send this little word cloud out to you so that you can see the final results. You'll also get a copy of an evaluation form. We'd love to hear your feedback about today's session. What worked for you and also suggestions for improvement. And we would love to have you join us for our final session, our sixth session of the series, which will be on March 9th where we are going to be pulling things all together and summarizing the resources, obstacles, gaps, opportunities, and big ideas that have been shared through the summit process so far both from speakers and participants. And we're going to also invite you again, just to fill out that input form that Mary mentioned at the very beginning of the session, we'd love to capture more information about resources in the community. And we're looking forward to charting some next steps forward with you. So thank you all again for joining and participating today. Thank you again to all of our speakers and panelists who joined us. We hope you had a great session here today and we look forward to your continued participation.