Strategic Plan Impact Summary
In accordance with our mission and vision, we’ll know we’re making progress as we:
I. Create a movement
-
Empower people to practice and share our skills, knowledge, and ethos.
- Enable people to take charge of their health through food.
- Help people to become agents of systemic change.
- Tap the talents of chefs and restauranteurs to advance our mission.
- Support healing in people to rebuild their lives through food.
- Train a corps of volunteers to radiate our practices outward.
-
Promote the benefits of nutrient density, bioavailability, and food variety.
- Transform the food system with corporate and non-profit partners.
- Build a vanguard for school lunch reform.
- Encourage healthy lifestyles and informed food choices.
- Elevate community health and appreciation of our shared lives.
-
Build a culture that reinforces core values.
- Show values through compelling stories, rituals, and symbols.
- Empower people to reconnect with what it means to be human.
- Establish credibility as a wellspring of human reclamation.
-
Mobilize community to solve problems of food security.
- Radiate an ethos of right livelihood into the community.
- Inspire individuals and organizations to help end malnutrition.
- Make food access a matter of conscience and action.
- Help people live their values by supporting us.
-
Position our approach as a model for communities around the world.
- Earn income to extend reach and meet triple-bottom line goals.
- Sustain work through business ventures and corporate partnerships.
- Provide resources to groups seeking to replicate the ESFL model.
II. Preserve prehistoric and fading foodways for future generations
-
Conduct ethnographic research important to our dietary future.
- Protect the health of all people, including future generations.
-
Share our research to reach the largest audiences possible.
- Maintain hundreds of webpages of useful, original content.
-
Provide context for the continued relevance of ancestral technologies.
- Create stories based on patterns of gathering, cooking, and eating.
-
Advocate appropriate food even when it leads in unfamiliar directions.
- Showcase foods that prompted evolutionary change in our anatomy.
-
Host an annual food summit with partner institutions.
- Position Washington College as a leader of human food advocacy.
III. Make the healthiest and most sustainable food the most affordable
-
Demonstrate authority in the food safety and policymaking processes.
- Combine advocacy with programs on the ground to gain traction.
- Work with food safety experts to change policy on traditional foods.
- Brief the media and national and local policymakers on food issues.
- Gain a reputation for producing authoritative and accessible material.
- Play an important role in influencing public policies and programs.
-
Create new ways to access food supporting social and ecological justice.
- Promote scalable food production, from homes to communities.
- Leverage the resources of government through policy advocacy.
- Showcase and promote the ethical use of wild foods in a diverse diet.
- Build capacity of leaders to support the distribution of healthy food.
- Expand economic opportunities for community residents.
- Show our support for local food systems.
- Examine what food security looks like at family and regional levels.
- Promote educational reform initiatives connecting people with food.
- Create model ordinances for compost and backyard livestock.
-
Share the products of our work across economic barriers.
- Offer culinary training and apprenticeship to all segments of society.
- Make high-quality food accessible among low-income households.
- Design and implement a Community-Supported Kitchen.
-
Create policy solutions that win lasting economic and social support.
- Show how access to human food can revitalize local economies.
- Oppose ill-conceived policies in concert with proposed alternatives.
-
Promote alternatives to harmful food products and production methods.
- Phase out unhealthy fats and oils at Washington College.
- Promote distribution of nutrient-dense and waste-free snacks.
- Advocate for awareness and avoidance of addictive food additives.
-
Meet the needs of our community today.
- Connect with wellness program for faculty, staff, and students.
- Support people recovering from sugar, alcohol, and other addictions.
- Monitor and optimize health of the Washington College community.
- Link ESFL research with seasonal menu offerings in the Dining Hall.
IV. Champion zero waste ethics
-
Work toward net-zero energy use and a carbon neutral footprint.
- Optimize daily operations to reduce energy expenditures.
- Explore methods of offsetting carbon emissions.
- Prioritize food and personnel transportation that avoids fossil fuels.
-
Promote community composting and zero waste cooking education.
- Compost food waste to remediate and build soil for food production.
- Close food production loops to economize nutrient cycling.
- Utilize every aspect of food via root-to-stalk / nose-to-tail methods.
-
Implement a procurement policy to lead toward self-sufficiency.
- Demonstrate frugality, thrift, and conscientious ingredient sourcing.
-
Promote safe, durable goods in the home kitchen / food service industry.
- Advocate for reduction of plastic bottles and beverage containers.
- Develop alternatives to single-use disposable packaging of food.
- Adhere to a purchasing policy that avoids disposable packaging.
- Promote alternatives to yogurt cups, soft drinks, and power bars.
- Promote reusable cups for beverages.
- Use cleaning products that avoid waste and environmental toxicity.
-
Work with local businesses and institutions to avoid food waste.
- Share local resources to avoid overconsumption and overproduction.
- Solicit donations of food products that might otherwise go to waste.
- Promote food waste collection for composting at public events.
- Promote use of compost in public projects and low-income housing.
V. Research and promote ethical methods of food production
-
Promote edible landscaping guided by permaculture design processes.
- Document, research, and promote functional plant polycultures.
- Promote water conservation and fertilizer/pesticide avoidance.
- Emulate the tendency toward food abundance in the natural world.
- Create examples of food access that support ecosystem health.
- Demonstrate alternative strategies to conventional agriculture.
- Ethically work with insects, chickens, pigs, and other livestock.
- Conduct research on urban gardening and broad scale farming.
- Help nurseries to prioritize sales of multifunctional plants.
- Develop models of regenerative food production and distribution.
- Produce ethically grown food with a focus on nutrient density.
- Promote regenerative households and local economic exchange.
- Ignite ecotourism in the region celebrating food security.
- Guide campus and community edible landscaping and signage.
- Work with government agencies to develop and share research.
- Recognize food producers that restore soil and wildlife habitat.
- Recognize existing programs that advocate responsible land use.
- Design edible landscapes with landowners and government.
-
Become known for the diverse and influential nature of our work.
- Share findings in social media, podcasts, and video/television.
- Produce reports, newsletters, fact sheets, and educational materials.
- Seek publication in books and peer-reviewed and popular journals.
- Give presentations with professional papers, posters, and lectures.
- Be the reputable source for safe use of traditional foodways.
VI. Pioneer a powerful paradigm of food education
-
Create a completely new culture of eating.
- Unite people from diverse economic and geographical backgrounds.
- Translate what we do in the ESFL to a home kitchen.
- Help people connect our work to their everyday lives.
- Offer public programs and professional development for educators.
- Host workshops for families.
- Implement a K-through-gray environmental educational program.
-
Educate students poised to become the next generation of leaders.
- Create a food studies academic program at Washington College.
- Promote horticultural credentials and wild food expertise.
- Build a pipeline of leaders committed to food and ecological justice.
- Provide an engaging place for youth to go during after-school hours.
- Organize after-school and school vacation programs.
- Place students as participants in the living landscape.
- Host student interns, classes, and community events.
- Train students to grow and prepare the most nutritious food possible.
-
Create space within traditional institutions from which to reshape them.
- Develop scalable programs geared for distribution in schools.
- Institute programs targeted at middle-school students.
- Partner with organizations to implement our replicable processes.
-
Address bioregional food security through education.
- Establish multifunctional outdoor learning spaces in diverse venues.
- Provide horticultural training focused in edible landscaping.
- Train students to design resilient food production systems.
- Introduce microlivestock/livestock capacities at Washington College.
- Support the development of edible schoolyards.
-
Serve as an aspirational model for educational institutions.
- Establish a stable, sustainable, and flexible funding base.
- Write business plans for program ideas.
- Create lasting relationships with students, donors, and participants.