Upcoming Meeting Agenda: May 18, 2021
Meeting taking place at Vidya’s house. Cedar will be facilitating the meeting, Adam will be keeping time and taking notes.
I'm still not sure about how we'd like to label these sections, so for this agenda, I separated items by how fast we're moving forward on them. There's a lot happening! And, we’re making decisions on ways to support the food justice work happening in our community.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1M6dOF16HA7w_DNCRkxLGF7O6pEcDx-Lzg78UtLpKhUw/edit?usp=sharing
Check-in, then begin
Process: whoever wants to go first goes first, the rest of the group listens without interruption. Once they are complete with their check-in, they pass to whoever they choose to check in next. Repeat until everyone has had a turn.
What is alive and present for you?
Where are you coming from today (mentally, emotionally, spiritually, physically)?
RUNNING ITEMS
Committing to a Project
Getting into further granularity and hashing out the details of a Slow Food food bank.
Resources: https://www.cdc.gov/pcd/issues/2021/20_0531.htm (Food Bank Report), https://www.facebook.com/TodaysHarvestmn (April’s most recent project
Current Action: Info-share and discuss what & how we could see this project taking shape.
WALKING ITEMS
Annual Report
Need to set three internal and three external goals. Cedar proposing goals for approval based on the work that came out of our group discussions with Growing Edge.
Current Action: Decide to use those goals for 2021
Growing Edge Coaching
Currently mocking up Leadership position profiles with Michelle. Next in-person meeting is Friday, May 28th.
STANDING ITEMS
Video Project
Kish, Bud, and Liz are a video team working with: Kilimo Farms, Cala Farms, CornerCopia Student Farms / U of M, Dream of Wild Health, Minnesota American Indian Center / Gatherings Cafe, and Big River Farms (in relationship with U of M's Cornercopia Student Farm).
They are creating a short video to highlight the landscape of Slow-Food-aligned activities happening in Minnesota, so when people say “What does Slow Food look like in Minnesota”, this video can be one way to show that answer from the mouths of the people doing the good work.
Current Action: Discuss options for a launch campaign for this project. Ideas: Give to the max day is in November, could we pair a Give to the Max campaign with the video launch and say any donations will be split between the folks featured in the video? What do we think about asking the folks featured in the video what they’d like to see happen for launch?
Mailchimp Culling
Alex filtered our Mailchimp mailing list by how active/responsive each recipient is. There are 200 subscribers who open and click through our email newsletters. The proposal is to send an email to the inactive subscribers asking them to re-opt-in within two weeks. If they do not re-opt-in we will remove them from the email subscriber list.
Reasons for wanting to do this are two-fold:
Create a more intimate mailing list where we can actually reach out to individual people or a much smaller, more personal group of supporters
Gain $360 per year that we can reallocate to something more impactful than pay for email subscribers who aren’t reading our emails anyway.
Current Action: Approve the action to send the initial re-opt-in email
Six Equity Actions
We missed the FSNE 21-day racial equity challenge (one of our six EIJ actions) for 2021. Can we acknowledge this and check in on the status of the six EIJ Actions we committed to as a board? Can we put these actions as a standing item on the agenda?
Current Actions: (1) Approve adding EIJ Actions as a standing item on the leadership team meeting agenda (2) Discuss what revisions we want to make to our six equity action commitments and if/what information we want to update our supporters with
Six Commitments to Joy + Justice
Conduct a membership analysis to assess: what does our membership look like now, what do we want it to look like, and how do we bridge that gap?
Pick 2-4 keystone/annual events led by indigenous and people-of-color led, grassroots organizations and rally our membership to show up, support, and listen.
Partner with Food Solutions New England (FSNE) to take part in their 21-day Racial Equity challenge each April.
Make a rubric/equity lens for all SFMN activities to ensure we are actively working to dismantle systems of oppression and white supremacy.
Check where we are in intercultural awareness, skills, and language as a group by taking the IDI inventory (Intercultural Development Inventory).
Make a food justice resources page for the website—highlight organizations and leaders doing the work in our community (with permission).
Braiding Sweetgrass Network-Wide Read (Slow Books)
Is this something we want to participate in? Likely will begin in July or later.
Current Action: Discuss if we want to participate and if so, on what scale.
SITTING ITEMS
Slow Food national EIJ email Listserv—anyone want to be added? Can we ask our chapter membership who wants to be added to this?
Getting chapter leaders added to slack—who wants to be added?
Partnering with the organizations we donated money to: Kilimo Collective, Appetite for Change, LEAFF Program, Brightside Produce—can we reach out and see if there are any ways to develop mutual aid relationships?
Partnering with North Country Food Alliance and Marnita’s Table—can we reach out and see if there are ways to develop mutual aid?
Offering Uprooting Racism training to our supporters and food justice leaders ($3000 price tag)
Annual board retreat: When/if we should have it. THis provides the space for chapter leaders to focus specifically on proposing new projects, programs, and long term vision. Can we time it with the national leadership summit (September)? It would be cool to do breakout zoom things with other chapters to discuss ideas and digest what we’re learning. Would also be cool to invite other food leaders in the community.
Snailblazer awards in October: start the conversation now to collect names of folks we want to nominate. Who can we highlight? Also, how can we develop mutual aid with Sean Sherman to support his work?
Can we reach out to Brian Yazzie and find out how to support each other with mutual aid? Can we find some way to start talking about mutual aid!
Communications consistency: what does Slow Communications look like? How do we involve a rubric for having our communications be liberatory and decolonizing?
Volunteer engagement: can we have a bi-monthly volunteer orientation that interested volunteers have to complete before being “eligible” to volunteer? Something like what Open Arms does for volunteers? Then the response to incoming volunteer requests is to tell them to attend an orientation and what they can expect at the orientation.
