Meet OGC Mission Fund Recipient: Black Food Fund
In honor of Black History Month, we’d like to introduce Mission Fund grant recipient Black Food Fund.
“As people of African descent, our work finds its meaning and strength in a powerful legacy of community building and collective struggle,” said Jamese Kwele, Co-Founder of the Black Food Fund.
People of African descent helped build the U.S. and its wealth but, through systemic oppression, haven’t been able to benefit from that wealth. With a mission focused on the redistribution of capital to Black farmers and land stewards, the Black Food Fund supports community-led efforts that promote food justice and preserve Black agricultural traditions. The Fund deploys resources to support Black farmers in their work to expand food justice projects that connect Black communities with fresh, culturally relevant foods and medicine; purchase new equipment to scale up their businesses; and reclaim and expand ancestral climate stewardship practices and more. They also redistribute capital for Black-led land justice, with a priority on projects that integrate Afro-Indigenous stewardship, collective healing and community ownership. Their work is all about recovering wealth and working towards reparative justice.
The Black Food Fund works in partnership with other Black-led organizations in the PNW through a collective called the Black Ag Ecosystem (or BAE). The organizations within the ecosystem support Black food and land justice in different and complementary ways – through network building, leadership development, and increasing access to capital, land and markets to name a few.
On top of their work to shift financial capital to Black farmers, they do work related to cooperative development. This year, they’re sending one of their team members to Ghana for the Repaired Nations Black Cooperative Solidarity Conference Tour to learn more about cooperative economics from an indigenous African perspective. They also help farmers raise their voices on issues that are important to them. Last year, they sent a group of Black farmers from Oregon and Washington to the Farmers for Climate Action Rally for Resilience on Capitol Hill where they marched and met with USDA staff and members of Congress to share the impact of climate change and to advocate for a Farm Bill that supports racial justice. In addition, the Black Food Fund is launching a new effort to elevate innovative models that increase Black farmers’ access to integrated capital, defined as the coordinated deployment of different forms of non-extractive, financial capital (including loans, investments and grants) and other non-financial resources.
The Black Food Fund plans to use their Mission Fund grant for operational support. At OGC, the grants we give to nonprofits aren’t tied to specific projects. We know that it can be difficult for organizations to receive operational support, so we’re glad to be able to provide general funding.
“We’re grateful for the partnership with OGC, for the funding and for increasing the visibility of our work. Together, we’re transforming our food system,” said Jamese.
The Black Food Fund is just one of the many organizations OGC’s Mission Fund supported in 2023. Find a list of all our recent grant recipients here.
