Brooklyn Food Coalition Mission

The organizers have carefully crafted a mission statement to guide our efforts going forward.  It will sound familiar to many of you–it’s not all that different that the mission used for the May conference.  However, key changes were made that we believe better reflect the mission of a grassroots movement, rather than a single event or conference.

Please review the text below.  At the meeting on July 22nd we will have a brief period of comment on the statement and then a vote to accept the new mission statement.

The Brooklyn Food Coalition proposes the following mission:

The Brooklyn Food Coalition is a grassroots partnership of individuals and groups who strive to give an effective voice to all those who live in or serve Brooklyn and wish to achieve a just and sustainable system for healthy, tasty, and affordable food.

We derive our ideas and our strength from local participation in the food movement, from people getting together in their neighborhoods to address their communities’ needs for a new food system. We want all decisions to be transparent and for decision-making to be available to everyone. Thus the most important action unit will be the neighborhood groups and the committees that they spawn. The Council of Neighborhood Organizations will be a representative body that is open to all and consists of voting members who are representatives of their neighborhood groups and/or issue or constituent committees (e.g., school food, senior, youth). This Council will be empowered to sign on to set policy for the Brooklyn Food Coalition and to facilitate coordination between neighborhood groups to deepen their effectiveness.

The goal is to maximize participation of as many people as possible to engage in the Food Democracy movement.