Social, Racial, and Food Justice Resources and Organizations

• US Food Sovereignty Alliance of food justice, anti-hunger, labor, environmental, faith-based, and food producer groups, works to uphold the right to food as a basic human right and to connect our local and national struggles to the international movement for food sovereignty.
• Building Movement Project develops research, tools, training materials and opportunities for partnership that bolster nonprofit organizations’ ability to support the voice and power of the people they serve. Check out their Social Service and Social Change process guide here.
• Racial Wealth Gap Learning Simulation from Bread for the World is an interactive tool that helps people understand the connections among racial equity, hunger, poverty, and wealth. It is a good first step for people unaware of structural inequality, a support tool for those who want a deeper understanding of structural inequality, and a source of information for experts who want to know the quantifiable economic impact of each policy that has widened today’s racial hunger, income, and wealth divides.
• United for a Fair Economy is a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization that supports social movements working for a resilient, sustainable and equitable economy. Their website has a variety of workshop materials and data on income inequality, race, wealth, and more.
• The Souls of Poor Folk covers the 50 years since 1968, when Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and thousands of Americans, alarmed at their government’s blindness to human need, launched the Poor People’s Campaign. You can find data on the “Four Evils” identified in the New Poor People’s Campaign: structural racism, poverty, militarism / war economy, and ecological devastation.
• Institute for Policy Studies is a progressive think tank dedicated to building a more equitable, ecologically sustainable, and peaceful society. In partnership with dynamic social movements, we turn transformative policy ideas into action.
• Soul Fire Farm is committed to ending racism and injustice in our food system, and their website has a reparations map for Black-Indigenous farmers and a list of black-led farming organizations in the US.
• “The Context Experts” from the Tamarack Institute discusses how to increase the authenticity of community engagement and eradicate tokenistic community engagement through the meaningful involvement of context experts.

Resources for Emergency Food Providers 

• Community Food Centres Canada builds health, belonging and social justice in low-income communities across Canada through the power of food. Their Good Food Principles are the heart of great programming. They also have a Knowledge Exchange and you can download their “Beyond the emergency: How to evolve your food bank into a force for change” manual.
• Why Hunger’s Rise Up: Organizing in Emergency Food features several organizations that are using emergency food programs and spaces to organize communities.
• “Sweet Charity? Emergency Food and the End of Entitlement” is Janet Poppendieck’s seminal book on the inherent problems with the US food banking model which is still relevant today.
• “Big Hunger: The Unholy Alliance Between Corporate America and Anti-Hunger Groups” by Andy Fisher sets forth a vision for what we can do to put food banks out of business and solve hunger.
• “The Fundraising Letter I’d Like to Receive” by Mark Winne demonstrates how traditional food bank communication and fundraising models do not typically seek to address root causes and provides an example of what could be if the focus of work shifted.
• Oregon Food Bank’s Client Engagement Report by Emerson Hunger Fellow Jamila Cervantes provides examples from across the emergency food network of organizations working more closely with their program constituents.
• Community Food Bank of Southern Arizona has developed these Power & Privilege Workshop Materials  resources to think about dignity and the experience of visiting an emergency food program.
• Bread for the City released this “Our New Mission” document which lays out their current strategy which is rooted in racial equity and social justice.
• Partners for a Hunger-Free Oregon’s Hunger-Free Leadership Institute is a leadership development opportunity for emerging community leaders with lived experience of hunger to gain access to skills and experiences to change anti-hunger policy.
• The Food Bank of the Southern Tier’s Speakers Bureau program provides public speaking and leadership development training to people with lived experience of food insecurity to become self advocates and help shift the narrative of who is a true expert on hunger and poverty.