By Mikey Kracht
In addition to being an undergraduate student at Indiana University Northwest and intern for CURE, I am an aspiring food insecurity combatant with a green thumb and a burning curiosity that fuels my search for knowledge. Listening to individuals sharing their unique and personal experiences through their own perspective and learning from them is a gift and an opportunity to receive all that gift has to offer. I was granted this opportunity when I was invited to host the most recent Partners in Conversation episode (soon to be released) featuring representatives from a collaboration of three community organizations fighting food insecurity while building up communities and increasing their survivability by integrating sustainable systems into them.
Communities are comprised of a series of systems interacting with one another, developing a network of individuals and groups that each have unique skillsets and pools of resources that equip them to occupy a variety of unique niches based upon the environment in which they live, whose opportunities are shaped by social interactions and their outcomes. The integrity of these social units is tied to the level of interconnectivity within the units as well as the kind of relationship each unit has regarding that interconnectivity. The most beneficial kind of relationship is a mutual one in which each member not only contributes to the success of each other interconnected member, but also has their own success supported by the other members that are interconnected. This support can either be providing greater resources than the member was previously able to survive on, allowing them to grow as a result, or supplementing the resources that a member is lacking, allowing them to recover and continue to exist. These two-way partnerships are symbiotic in nature and precipitate exponentially better initiative outcomes, survivability rates, and drastically improving the level of resiliency built in to both the members as well as the entire network.
Working to develop these community partnerships and develop a broader interconnected network of services is the most beneficial and sustainable method for securing the future existence and operation of the community and its members. The dawn of modern communication technologies and the internet eased the burden of outsourcing from a community to supplement various needs reducing the importance of locality to a degree. This has precipitated many disconnected systems of living in which members of those communities must support themselves and are limited to an extent by that. However, it has also created many opportunities for individuals that dedicate themselves to common causes to collaborate on the regional, national, and international levels. The historic Emerson neighborhood of Gary Indiana is home to a working example of what one of these mutually beneficial collaborations can do.
The members of this collaboration were interviewed about their journey, their progress, and what they aspire to accomplish together on the most recent installment of the partners in conversation series. Pastor Curtis Whittaker, Progressive Community Church of Gary, had a premonition of a famine that followed the collapse or severe disruption of the current national food distribution systems, that would befall ill-equipped communities that lack sufficient local food systems or local food systems at all. Pastor Whittaker, after ruminating on possible solutions for the looming disaster, settled on digging in and intervening at the root of the problem by seeking to develop a local food system in the surrounding area of the historic Emerson neighborhood and beyond. This project would require critical thinking and considerate planning with the proper knowledge and professional experience as well as the challenge of establishing the connections required to support such an endeavor. Professor Frank Neirzwicki of Indiana University Bloomington’s Paul H. O’Neil School of Public and Environmental Affairs, a passionate, and learned community builder and urban planner had great interest in developing resilience components into localized communities, and Pastor Whittaker’s vision for a more reliable food source for his community was right up Professor Nierzwicki’s alley.
The Center for Urban and Regional Excellence at Indiana University’s Northwest campus had provided an avenue for outreach as a community-based organization in the area to help both parties connect better with community partners as well as dedicating the resources available to them to assist both parties in their efforts. Each member brought a variety of strengths as well as weaknesses to the table, but by working together their collective strengths effectively fill in the gaps. As a result, Faith Farms has been a very fruitful endeavor for the local community, providing them with fresh produce and mitigating the challenges and effects of food insecurity they face in the region. This successful collaboration also broadens the awareness of the concepts and methods utilized to combat food insecurity, as well as acting as a working example to encourage and empower others looking to strengthen their communities.
These collaborators are jam-packed with experience and knowledge with only a desire to share that with others in hopes of spurring further localized growth and community building. A very informative conversation with the spark of inspiration ensues, in the upcoming episode of Partners in Conversation.
