For Farmers, Not Funders.

As a scholar of the Reynolds Program in Social Entrepreneurship, I have recently felt saturated with stories about successful non-profits and NGOs, and with bullet-pointed presentations on what made them functional, how they raised money, and how they scaled up their impact from a local to a national or global level.These “exemplary” organizations are usually working towards social, environmental, or political justice, particularly in the form of “systemic change,” the (somewhat disputed) goal of “social entrepreneurship.” Such organizations include City Year, Teach for America, Environmental Defense, and Habitat for Humanity. They combine direct action and activism, in order to make a positive and significant impact on our world. As Leslie Crutchfield, co-author of Forces for Good, mentioned in a Reynolds Expert session this morning, these organizations are “network oriented,” meaning they have a collaborative mindset, a strategy focused on “growing the network” (rather than the organization itself), and they work to share resources with other NGOs, to function with open source intellectual property, to develop their competitors, and to cultivate leadership rather than hoard talent.” As far as I’m concerned, that sounds great. But it’s a schpiel with a lot of buzzwords.Real Food New York, before this past weekend, was a group that had come together because of a single, inspiring, well-planned event: the Real Food Summit. We had stayed in touch since the Summit, as an email-by-email network of kids sharing notes on our efforts to bring Real Food onto our campuses. We had significant potential to slowly evaporate in buzzwords, “networking,” “collaborating,” and “building solidarity,” and eventually perhaps just wasting our time.This Sunday, many members of Real Food New York came together formally, to decide who we are as a group, how we can use each other, and what our plan is for the future.First of all, Real Food is food that nourishes land, community, and people. Real Food New York is a bunch of students who are at various stages of increasing the amount of Real Food on our campuses and in our communities. We are helping our schools to hire a Sustainability Director, or negotiating stringent contracts with our food service providers, collaborating with these food service providers to develop sustainable menus, or formally requesting comprehensive purchasing information from our Directors of Dining Services. All of us are trying to raise student awareness of the benefits of Real Food. We have our own organizations, at our own schools. And as Adam pointed out last week, the last thing we need is another organization, demanding more of our time, working to advance the same projects within which we’re already engaged, and only further dividing and devaluing the meager time of our meager numbers. We knew the existence of “Real Food New York” could easily be more of a burden than a blessing.But the students of Real Food New York recognize: We are useful to each other for our personal experience with institutional sustainability projects, our resources (natural and personal), and the moral support of like-minded friends, who understand each other, and share meals together. On a larger scale, our institutions together have a formidable purchasing power, whether we’re working with the same food service provider, the same corporation, or the same farmer. As individuals, each of us can barely represent our school. Together, and as we gain members, we have the ability to represent the student voice of the local food movement in the New York area.This Sunday morning, we hashed out the details. By 11am, we had voted unanimously to label our region inclusively. We are New York State, and her neighbors. We represent urban and rural, large and small, private and public institutions. By noon, we decided we’d meet formally once a semester, and informally by topic or project as we deem appropriate, by consensus. We recognized that the listserve wasn’t working. We decided to start an online open source resource pool, a wiki/blog combination, in which all members would have contributor status. At 1pm we ate lunch, potluck style: pasta with pesto, squash bread, brownies, and roasted carrots with parmesan. At 2pm, in a whirlwind of inspiring expertise, Thomas Forster explained to us the concept and logistics of the United Nations’ Commission on Sustainable Development, which this year will focus on land and agriculture. A group of students from Real Food New York decided to prepare to attend the CSD, and to lend their material knowledge to the youth presence at the UN. Finally, at 4pm, Kerry Trueman and Matt Rosenberg instructed us on the digital world, and explained how to actually design the “wiki/blog combination” (very helpful of them, as the technological savvy of our group ranges from Google-expert to decidedly anti-computer). So we left The New School this Sunday evening, with a plan.Our blog is http://www.realfoodnewyork.org, and links to our Wiki.Our self-defining blurb is here.Any type of collaboration requires constant communication and commitment, and generally a good dose of never-enough outreach, secretarial scheduling, and detail-heavy event planning. We are not exempt from these requirements. But as collaborators, we will simply help each other as much as we can, and we hope to do so enjoyably and productively. Check out our group, and if you’re a student or campus stakeholder in the New York area, join us! Post on the site, come to our meetings, host us for dinner, we’ll host you. We are no passing flurry of meaningless buzzwords. We are the students of New York.