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Daily Timelines
*Schedule is Subject to Change
Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Pre-conference Field Trips and Workshop:
9:00am – 5:00pm Field Trips 1 & 2
9:00am – 3:30pm Field Trip 3
10:00am – 4:30pm Field Trip 4
10:00am – 5:00pm Narrative Change Workshop
11:00am – 5:00pm Field Trip 5
1:00pm – 6:00pm Registration Opens
6:30pm – 8:30pm Opening Reception at Contemporary Art Museum (CAM)
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
7:30am – 6:00pm Registration
7:30am – 8:30am Continental Breakfast
8:00am – 9:30am Opening Session with Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis & Karen Washington
9:00am – 12:00pm Exhibits Open
9:45am – 10:45am Breakout Sessions
11:00am – 12:00pm Breakout Sessions
12:00pm – 2:00pm Lunch in the City (lunch is on your own)
1:30pm – 6:00pm Exhibits Open
2:00pm – 2:45pm “Nothing About Us, Without Us” Panel – Listen to “experts by experience” from the US, Canada, and the UK discuss hunger and food insecurity.
3:00pm – 4:15pm Regional Organizing
4:30pm – 6:30pm Membership Meeting
4:15pm – 5:30pm Happy Hour with the Exhibitors
6:30pm – 8:30pm Reception at Raleigh Union Station
Thursday, September 5, 2019
7:30am – 3:00pm Registration & Exhibits
7:30am – 8:30am Continental Breakfast
8:00am – 9:45am Keynote Address with Patrick Conway and North Carolina Innovators Panel
10:00am – 11:00am Breakout Sessions
11:00am – Hospitality Break with Exhibitors
11:30am – Breakout Sessions
11:00am – 11:30am Hospitality Break with Exhibitors
11:30am – 12:30pm Conference Workshops
12:30pm – 1:30pm Closing Lunch
1:30pm – 2:45pm Keynote Address with Jan Poppendieck & Robert Ojeda
2:45pm – 3:00pm Closing Remarks
Field Trips
All field trips take place on Tuesday, September 3, 2019 and will meet and leave from the Raleigh Convention Center. Buses will board 30 minutes prior to the scheduled field trip time. Prices include lunch. Once you have signed up for the pre-conference event of your choice, a conference organizer will contact you directly with details.
Field Trip 1: Justice & Equality
Time: 9:00am – 5:00pm
Field Trip Cost: $75
Description: This field trip offers a visit to three important sites in Guilford and Alamance counties.
The International Civil Rights Center & Museum (ICRCM) – The ICRCM serves as a teaching facility, archival center, and collection museum devoted to the international struggle for civil and human rights. The Museum celebrates the nonviolent protests of the 1960 Greensboro sit-ins that served as a catalyst in the civil rights movement.
The Historic monument of The Greensboro Four (located on the campus of North Carolina A&T University).
Benevolence Farm – Benevolence Farm seeks to cultivate leadership, promote sustainable livelihoods, and reap structural change with individuals impacted by the criminal justice system in North Carolina. This organization provides a transitional living program for up to 6 women leaving North Carolina prisons. They recognize that change must come from within, but can be cultivated and inspired through a supportive, natural environment. Their goal is to give their participants the time and space — figuratively and literally — to make real, lasting changes.
Field Trip 2: Economic and Environmental Resilience and Innovation
Time: 9:00am – 5:00pm
Field Trip Cost – $60
Description: This field trip offers a visit to three unique sites in Eastern NC.
Working Landscapes – Working Landscapes is a nonprofit rural development organization working to advance the economic and environmental resilience in the region. They work with partners to build a food system that connects local farmers to local consumers in an effort to grown the economy and improve health in the region.
Soul City – Soul City, as described by author Devin Fergus, was a city built for African Americans (though not exclusively), steered by black interests, and funded upfront by the federal government. It was, in essence, a request for the federal government to make good on the unrealized 40 acres and a mule promise made to African Americans emancipated from slavery. The hope was that the opportunities Soul City provided such as jobs, education, housing, training, and other social services, would help lessen out-migration.
Green Rural Redevelopment Organization (GRRO) – GRRO is an organization that turns empty, abandoned lots into thriving community assets. They educate, train, and empower residents to become stewards of the land, leading to better, more productive outcomes and healthier communities. They facility training that promotes self-employment through farming and business opportunities that lead to self-sufficiency.
Field Trip 3: Agritourism, Empowerment and Faith
Time: 9am – 3:30pm
Field Trip Cost: $60
Description: This field trip offers a visit to inspiring sites in Sampson County.
Coharie Indian Tribe and Sorghum Farm – Coharie Indians – learn about their history, cultural and educational activities, and enjoy a visit to their local farm.
Episcopal Farmworker Ministry – Episcopal Farmworker Ministry responds to the physical, emotional, and spiritual needs of migrant and seasonal farmworkers and their families, and actively supports opportunities for them to become self-directive. They seek to minister to farmworkers through direct services, through development and support of programs that work towards the empowerment of farmworkers. They encourage leadership development, advocacy, and education aimed toward a systematic change of agricultural policy at local and state levels.
Field Trip 4: City of Oaks
Time: 10:00am – 4:30pm
Field Trip Cost: $55
Description: This field trip offers historical sites as well as visits to locations with unique food programs in Raleigh.
Shaw University – Shaw University is the first historically black institution of higher education in the South and among the oldest in the nation. Shaw boasts many “firsts”: the first college in the nation to offer a four-year medical program, the first Historically Black College in the nation to open its doors to women, and the first Historically Black College in North Carolina to be granted an “A” rating by the State Department of Public Instruction.
Camden Street Learning Garden – The garden is situated on one acre of land in downtown Raleigh and features twenty-two community beds, a 420 sq. ft. market garden, a food forest, a 6,000-gallon rainwater catchment system, two beehives, a green house, a vermi-compost bin, a composting facility and a kitchen classroom.
Well Fed Community Garden – Sponsored by The Irregardless Cafe – a local Raleigh restaurant founded in 1975 – the Garden is dedicated to reconnecting folks to the source of their nourishment: plants, chickens & bees, soil, air, water and friendship. The Well Fed Garden is an example of urban agriculture – 20% of its bounty is donated to volunteers and neighbors and the remaining 80% is served in meals at the Cafe or its Catering Division.
Food Shuttle Farm – The Food Shuttle Farm provides locally grown, chemical-free produce for those in need. Eighty percent of the land under cultivation grows food for distribution at School Pantries, Mobile Tastiness Machine, Mobile Markets, and Grocery Bags for Seniors, providing the freshest produce possible to those in need. The remaining 20% percent of the crop goes towards for-profit production to contribute to the farm’s financial stability.
Dorothea Dix Park – Dorothea Dix Park is Raleigh’s largest city park. The 308-acre site blends historic architecture and rich landscapes into a unique destination in the heart of Raleigh. The City, in partnership with the Dix Park Conservancy, completed a two-year-long master planning process for the park in February 2019. The master plan builds off the long legacy of healing on the site and creates restorative places through enriched natural landscapes and cultural centers.
State Farmers Market – The State Farmers Market is made up of: 30, 000 square feet Farmers’ Building; 15,600 square feet Market Shoppes; 15,400 square feet Truckers Building; Wholesale Terminal; over 2 acres of Market Imports; and 3 restaurants.
Field Trip 5: Southern Roots, Black Entrepreneurship
Time: 11:00am – 5:00pm
Field Trip Cost: $60
Description: This field trip offers a visit to some interesting sites in Durham.
Durham Hub Farm – Durham Hub Farm engages students, teachers, and the greater Durham community in environmental stewardship, health and nutrition, and career development. Their mission is to improve the academic achievement and well-being of students in Durham Public Schools through experiential outdoor learning.
Black Wall Street – In the early twentieth century, Parrish Street in Durham, North Carolina, was the hub of African American business activity. This four-block district was known as “Black Wall Street,” a reference to the district of New York City that is home to the New York Stock Exchange and the nation’s great financial firms. Although other cities had similar districts, Durham’s was one of the most vital, and was nationally known.
Bull City Cool: Farmer FoodShare – The mission of Farmer Foodshare is to make fresh, local food available to everyone in the community and to ensure that the farmers growing it make a healthy living.
Durham Co-op Market – Durham Co-op Market began through the efforts of folks in several neighborhoods near downtown Durham, NC who saw a need and were excited about the possibility of creating a grocery/market that focused on locally-produced food. The co-op is community owned, and community focused. Their goal is to return as much revenue as possible to the community by supporting local farms, selling locally made products, and supporting local jobs.
Narrative Change Workshop – Tuesday, September 3, 2019
Time: 10:00am – 5:00pm
Cost: Free, Lunch Provided (sponsored by WhyHunger)
Narrative Analysis of Power – Story Based Strategy Training
This interactive one-day workshop will provide participants with a practical framework to create powerful stories and hands-on tools for framing your issues. We will explore what it means to apply a “narrative analysis of power” to social change work and share the story-based strategy approach for developing campaign narratives. This training is perfect for organizers looking to ground themselves in winning framing and communication strategies, as well as anyone working for progressive change who wants to become a more strategic storyteller and story-changer. Together, we will generate creative ideas and continue to align groups within the Closing the Hunger Gap Network in the work to advance narrative change to support grassroots solutions to end hunger and its root causes.
Please Note: There is a 90-minute self-paced introductory course to Story-Based Strategy for Narrative Change, provided by Center for Story-Based Strategy, that is a pre-requisite for this training. Once you register, you will be provided with the details to log into the course free of charge.
Keynote Speakers
Wednesday, September 4, 2019
Rev. Dr. Liz Theoharis
The Reverend Dr. Liz Theoharis is an ordained minister with the Presbyterian Church, the director of the Kairos Center for Rights, Religions, and Social Justice at Union Theological Seminary and the co-chair of the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. She has spent the past two decades organizing amongst the poor and dispossessed in the United States. She has led and won major economic and racial justice campaigns across the country, organized hundreds of trainings and bible studies with grassroots leaders, written in major national and international publications and recently published Always with Us?: What Jesus Really Said about the Poor and Revive Us Again: Vision and Action in Moral Organizing. In 2018, alongside the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber, Theoharis helped to launch the Poor People’s Campaign: A National Call for Moral Revival. Over the coming years, the campaign will organize poor people across race, religion, geography, political party and other so-called lines of division to fuel a moral revolution of values in the country. Theoharis has been recognized for her work by many national bodies, including the Presbyterian Church, Brooklyn for Peace, the New York Council on American-Islamic Relations and the 2018 Politico Magazine Top 50 list of “thinkers, doers and visionaries who are driving American politics and policy”.
Karen Washington
Since 1985 Karen Washington has been a community activist, striving to make the New York City a better place to live. As a community gardener and board member of the New York Botanical Gardens, she worked with Bronx neighborhoods to turn empty lots into community gardens. As an advocate, and former president of the New York City Community Garden Coalition, she stood up and spoke out for garden protection and preservation. As a member of the La Familia Verde Garden Coalition, she helped launched a City Farms Market, bringing fresh vegetables to the community. Karen is also a board member of, Why Hunger, and NYC Farm School . As a speaker, teacher and mentor, she leads workshops on growing food and justice across the country. In 2010, Co- Founded Black Urban Growers (BUGS) an organization supporting growers in both urban and rural settings. In 2012, Ebony magazine voted her one of their 100 most influential African Americans in the country and in 2014 was the recipient of the James Beard Leadership Award. Since retiring from Physical Therapy in 2014, Karen is Co-owner/Farmer at Rise & Root Farm.
Thursday, September 5, 2019
Patrick Conway
Patrick Conway, MD, joined Blue Cross and Blue Shield of North Carolina as President and CEO-elect on Oct. 1, 2017. He was named President and CEO on December 5, 2017, succeeding Brad Wilson.
Conway most recently served as Deputy Administrator for Innovation and Quality at the federal Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). In this role he also held the position of Director of the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI). As the most senior non-political leader at CMS, he worked in both Republican and Democratic administrations and is considered one of the driving forces behind the national movement to value-based care, with health care payments tied to quality and innovation.
At Blue Cross NC, Conway is continuing that commitment to delivering the best health outcomes and best service experience at the lowest cost for customers. The company is a leader in improving North Carolina’s health care system, making health care more affordable and working with doctors, hospitals and others to improve quality and value. Blue Cross NC strives to be a model health plan and health solutions company.
Conway joined CMS in 2011 as the agency’s Chief Medical Officer and served as Principal Deputy Administrator and Acting Administrator. A respected leader, innovator and clinician, he was elected to the National Academy of Medicine (NAM) in 2014. Election to the NAM is considered one of the highest honors in the fields of health and medicine, recognizing individuals who have demonstrated outstanding professional achievement.
He is a practicing pediatric hospitalist and was selected as a master of hospital medicine from the Society of Hospital Medicine. Before joining CMS, he oversaw clinical operations, quality improvement, and research at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center, with a focus on improving patient outcomes across the entire multi-billion dollar health system.
Conway completed his pediatrics residency at Harvard Medical School’s Children’s Hospital Boston, graduated with high honors from Baylor College of Medicine, and graduated summa cum laude from Texas A&M University.
Additional honors include:
• Presidential Rank Award, Distinguished Executive (president’s highest executive honor)
• Health and Human Services Secretary’s Award for Distinguished Service
• White House Fellow
• Robert Wood Johnson Clinical Scholar
Robert Ojeda
Robert Ojeda is chief program officer at the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona. Robert was born and raised in Arequipa, Peru, where he grew up farming at his family’s farm. He joined the Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona (CFBSA) in 2010, where he is currently Chief Program Officer. In his role, Robert oversees the CFBSA’s programmatic initiatives including hunger relief, and community health, education, and development. Robert has a master’s degree in International Agriculture and Rural Development and a Ph. D. in Adult and Extension Education from Cornell University. He has over twenty years of experience doing community organizing work in Tucson and overseas. He regularly teaches community organizing and development workshops to indigenous leaders from Latin America.
Janet (Jan) Poppendieck
Janet Poppendieck is Senior Faculty Fellow at CUNY Urban Food Policy Institute and Professor Emerita of Sociology at Hunter College. She was the co-founder, with Nick Freudenberg, of the NYC Food Policy Center at Hunter College. Her primary concerns, both as a scholar and as an activist, are poverty, hunger, and food assistance in the United States. She is the author of Breadlines Knee Deep in Wheat: Food Assistance in the Great Depression (Rutgers 1986, University of California Press, 2014), Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement (Viking 1998, Penguin 1999) and Free For All: Fixing School Food in America (University of California Press 2010). She holds a Ph.D. and a Master’s degree from the Florence Heller Graduate School for Advanced Studies in Social Welfare at Brandeis University.
Panelists
“Nothing About Us, Without Us” Panel – Wednesday, September 4, 2:00pm-2:45pm
Listen to “experts by experience” from the US, Canada, and the UK discuss hunger and food insecurity.
Co-Moderators: Dr. Rebecca de Souza, Dr. Kayleigh Garthwaite
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Panelists: Helen Kane, Jackie Bogart, Heather Walters, Andrew Antonio
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Rebecca de Souza, Ph.D.
Rebecca de Souza is an Associate Professor in the Department of Communication at the University of Minnesota, Duluth. Dr. de Souza’s research is concerned with how political and economic systems impact health, access to food, and other social inequalities. Her research and teaching focus on how language and communication shape how we think about issues, people, and the world around us. Her work explores how we can use communication to invert oppressive meanings and systems. In her recent book Feeding the Other: Whiteness, Privilege, and Neoliberal Stigma in Food Pantries (MIT Press, 2019), de Souza argues that stigma is a poisonous undercurrent that runs rampant in the lives of food insecure individuals. The book analyzes how stigma negatively impacts the health outcomes and social wellbeing of individuals and communities. Dr. de Souza argues that stigma is not “natural”, but interactional. Stigma depends on who has the power to mark people and groups as different or the “Other”. The book contends that people who use food assistance programs are marked as lazy, irresponsible, and “bad citizens” by society around them and even within food pantries, and this stigma is intensified for people of color who also carry the burden of racism.
Dr Kayleigh Garthwaite
Dr Kayleigh Garthwaite is a Birmingham Fellow in the Department of Social Policy, Sociology and Criminology at the University of Birmingham, UK. Her research interests focus on poverty and inequality, foodbank use, and social security benefits, with a particular focus on stigma. Kayleigh is the author of ‘Hunger Pains: life inside foodbank Britain’ (2016, Policy Press), which is based on 18 months of ethnographic data collected in a Trussell Trust foodbank, North East England.
Helen Kane
Helen has a degree in management and has spent her career working with people with special needs. While with foster parents, teenage mothers or group home managers she has developed an understanding that nutrition and food sufficiency is essential to healthy living.
Throughout her career she has worked with dietitians and in her retirement has worked primarily with agencies devoted to bringing good nutrition to all. Representing Mother Hubbard’s Cupboard at this conference is a great pleasure
Our two central concerns are these: 1.We have not found enough strategies to help our population make the most nutritious food selections. 2. We also see far too many impoverished people with empty cupboards a week before food stamps ore renewed. I am working every day to find solutions to these problems.
Jackie Bogart
Jackie Bogart is an AmeriCorps VISTA with the Food Bank of the Southern Tier in Elmira NY, where she is in her second year of service. She is a single mother of four children and lives in Owego, NY. Jackie graduated from the Food Bank’s first Speakers Bureau program in 2016. Since then, she has shared her story with a variety of audiences and become an advocate for social change. Jackie spoke at the Poor People’s Campaign Mass Meeting in Binghamton, NY in 2017 and on a panel the Anti-Hunger Policy Conference in DC. She is also a part of the Closing the Hunger Gap Narrative Change working group. Jackie is no stranger to food insecurity and poverty, and the trauma that comes with it. She hopes her story can inspire others to address the systemic issues that cause poverty, and that more people like her can find and reclaim their voice.
Heather Walters
Heather Walters is a 27 year old national health service worker who volunteers as an Expert by Experience and has worked voluntarily with people in food hunger and insecurity for about 5 years. Heather was just coming out of college when she experienced food poverty and insecurity after her family unit broke down. Her mother was paying bills and she was buying food with her government assistance money. Her mother moved away after her grandfather died, and Heather was then on her own.After 3 years of government assisted benefits, she finally got a job, but that didn’t end the struggles. Having to pay all the bills meant little money left for food. Heather admits ‘It’s still hard now but with working as Food Power Newcastle, we aim to bring together the other food aid organisations and charities so everyday people know where to go and when.’
Andrew Antonio
Andrew Antonio has been working on Food Security and Harm Reduction projects in Toronto’s East End for over 10 years. Beginning as a community worker at South Riverdale Community Health Center he worked alongside marginalized communities, those living on the street with mental illness, and those whose circumstances exceed well beyond the margins of poverty. Currently as Foodshare’s Good Food Market Facilitator, Antonio works to animate grassroots driven, low barrier, non profit produce stands that increase consumption of vegetables and fruits across Toronto. These produce stands, known as Good Food Markets, demonstrate models for change, advocate for food security and food justice through the actions of the community they are located.
“North Carolina Innovators” Panel – Thursday, September 5, 8:45am-9:45am
Meet the people behind some of North Carolina’s most innovative food systems.
Moderator: Natalie Bullock-Brown
Panelists: Erin Byrd, Shorlette Ammons, Rosa Saavedr, Maria Jasso, Noran Sanford
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Natalie Bullock Brown
Natalie Bullock Brown is a teaching assistant professor at North Carolina State
University, and a documentary filmmaker. She is currently working on her first
feature length documentary film as a director, which will explore beauty standards
and their impact on black women and girls. She is also a producer for awardwinning
filmmaker Byron Hurt’s upcoming PBS documentary, HAZING. Natalie is a
contributor and guest for the monthly program #BackChannel, for which she
provides pop culture critique along with Dr. Mark Anthony Neal of Duke University,
on WUNC radio’s The State of Things, hosted by Frank Stasio. Natalie was an
assistant professor in film and broadcast media at Saint Augustine’s University for
nearly 12 years, has produced multi-part DVD series documenting the Freedom
Summer 50th Anniversary Commemorative Conference, and the Student Non-
Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC ) 50th Anniversary Commemorative
Conference. For more than a decade, Natalie served as host of Black Issues Forum, a
public affairs program on UNC-TV, North Carolina’s statewide public television
network. Prior to joining Saint Augustine’s University, Natalie maintained a
freelance career, providing production, research, and rights clearance consultation
for clients including Jazz at Lincoln Center, filmmaker Ken Burns and Florentine
Films, media companies Jazz Video Networks and Dreamtime Entertainment,
award-winning filmmaker Judith Helfand, and others. Before going freelance,
Natalie served as a producer and reporter for UNC-TV. Before that, she worked for
filmmaker Ken Burns in his New York production office, serving as an associate
producer on Burns’ 10 part PBS series Jazz, and as a production coordinator on
Burns’ and Lynn Novick’s Frank Lloyd Wright. Natalie holds a Master of Fine Arts in
Film Production from Howard University, and a Bachelor of Arts degree in English
from Northwestern University. She began her work in film as an apprentice editor
at National Geographic Television.