Join us in Action!

What’s an Action Team?

A group of people who collaboratively identify shared values, goals, and a workplan to increase racial equity in the food system.

Each Action team is represented at monthly MFJN Leadership Team meetings to share updates, collaborate, and help shape the network.

Who can be part of an Action Team? Who can lead one?

You can! Action Teams are co-led by people who have first-hand experience, knowledge, and connections with inequities in our food system. Some people participate as community members and others as representatives of organizations.

Why Action Teams?

Many collective efforts to improve our Twin Cities Metro Area food system have been successful in the past, and more work is needed to make lasting, transformational change. Through the 2020 MFJN Network Strategic Vision network process, multi-stakeholder Action Teams emerged as a way to increase action-centered collaboration that directly addresses racial equity in our food system through grassroots strategies. 

How do Action Teams work?

MFJN is based on a shared leadership model with multiple backbone organizations who are holding space for collective action, community-based leadership, less duplication and more impactful change. Following the Social Gastronomy Movement’s Collective Impact Model of shifting social contexts in how we collaborate towards our collective goals, we know that the WAY we partner in our efforts to change local, statewide, national and even global food systems is JUST as important as the WORK we do together. 

Each Action Team identifies its own values, goals, and workplans based on what they see are priorities in their area of the food system. MFJN Network Weavers, Backbone Organizations, and Leadership Team members, and the connected networks of those in the Action Teams support the work in different ways – from sharing time, space, and ideas to building capacity through collaborative fundraising.

Got it! How can I get involved?

Fill out the Interest Form and tell us who you’d like to connect with. If you’ve already done this but want to re-engage or ask questions, email info@mfjn.org.

In addition to the Action Teams below, we also have opportunities to support network building through the MFJN Sustainability and Engagement teams.

Established & Emerging MFJN Action Teams:

Community Food Distribution

Currently in development! Fill out the Interest form to connect with and support this team.

Cross Campus Food Access Coalition

A unique team of colleges using a justice and equity framework to address food systems while sharing and collaborating on food access/food systems events. We act as a community to learn and refine best practices to address food insecurity on college campuses. We engage and develop interdisciplinary student leadership around food access, food systems, sustainability, and community organizing to learn more about what food insecurity looks like at each of our campuses, collectively, and share that story.

Culinary Wellness Action Team

We’re developing innovative training, especially for underrepresented communities, that combines advanced culinary skills with herbal and natural wellness practices, emphasizing local sourcing. Our aim is to empower participants with unique skills, enhancing their competitiveness in both the culinary and wellness fields, as we develop a new curriculum, run hands-on workshops, strengthen partnerships, and create solid career pathways.

Food is Medicine

Rebuilding people’s relationship with food and changing policies by: reconnecting our bodies with food; getting upstream to where food and plants are medicine; valuing traditional knowledge and experience; creating a shared understanding of “food is medicine;” and advocating for resources and choices that support using everyday herbs and food medicinally. 

Food and Farm Entrepreneurs

Supporting various career tracks and pathways for each vocational division. Including institutional food career pathway (hospitals, nursing homes.), or school food service track targeting school nutrition service employment opportunities. Potential career tracks may also include: restaurants, catering, food-entrepreneurship, food justice service, etc.). Organizing Kitchen Partners, groups that have physical kitchen spaces that can be used for hands-on classroom training, and curriculum delivery. Kitchen partners may also be career track hosts, or could be stand alone spaces like a corporate kitchen during off hours, a church, or school. 

GROWS (Growing Resilience On the West Side of St. Paul)

We are primarily a place-based action team, working toward food sovereignty in our neighborhood, West Side, Saint Paul, which, according to a recent Ramsey County survey, has a food insecurity rate over 23%.  Together we organize folks in our community to care for and harvest several communal gardens and collectively run a network of free farmstands.  We partner with lots of individuals, small businesses, other organizations and our neighborhood farmers market to bring fresh, locally-grown produce to our friends and neighbors.  We also offer youth and family programming in our gardens and organize community dinners.  Our work is seasonal and requires all hands on deck beginning around April through October. 

Northside Fresh

The identity of Northside Fresh is based on a promise to our community from the heart, with a tenacious will to ensure that everyone in our community is going to have access to an abundance of fresh healthy food. A lot of it is going to be grown locally. The way we grow this local food system together will generate butterfly effects that support accelerated movement toward realization of our collective impact goal, which is a North Minneapolis community that is both healthy and wealthy, transformed by creation of a local food system that set conditions for this achievement.

Policy Action Team

Coming together across varied perspectives to identify the most meaningful policy solutions to advance food justice.

Prepared Meals

Equitably providing prepared meals to meet community needs and preferences through collaboration and open communication to avoid duplication of efforts across orgs.

Urban Agriculture & Land Access

Through connecting, mentorship and technical assistance, we are working to building capacity for entrepreneurs/farmers/orgs to receive the resources that will be allocated to support infrastructure for aggregation of producers to meet scale. Our work has more of an economic focus; agriculture as a BUSINESS MODEL, for-profit part of commerce. Viewing Farmers/Producers as entrepreneurs with a focus on land access & land permanency for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers. Purchasing from more local, urban growers and being able to prioritize Black growers, not just BIPOC rather ADOS/Foundation Black Americans. GOALS: Scaling, Education, Advocacy & Climate Justice

The Common Table (MN State Fair) – new for 2024!

Expanding and enhancing the food justice legacy of The Common table exhibit by tying all the current elements together and highlighting the systemic nature of what goes into eating food. This includes making a more explicit connection to equity; highlighting our common experiences of food; and connections between urban and rural food systems. **Currently seeking volunteers! Fill out the Interest form to connect.**

Youth Action Team

Connecting youth into the local food justice landscape through collaborative events and including youth voice in policy and advocacy.

Other Emerging Teams:

• Government Collaborative on Wasted Food Prevention
• Small Foodshelves
• Faith Communities
• [insert your action team here!]