Hello team!
We are almost at our one year anniversary (wow!) and have a lot to be proud of. We held our first March for Healthy School Food in June, we have three exciting pieces of legislation in front of City Council as a result of our advocacy—one requiring DOE to come up with an implementation plan for scratch-cooking, another putting more funding into garden programs, and a third funding district level Food-Ed coordinators to increase access to nutrition education.
On a more micro-level, we are also working to get chocolate milk out of schools and to ensure that every school has a water jet in their cafeterias.
We are now several hundred members strong, we have over 2500 signatures on our school food petition, we have been on National Public Radio, we are in the process of filing to become a non-profit and have come up with an exciting initial Board of Directors (more on that once it's all finalized) and will soon be able to fundraise to support our mission and advocacy.
So, it's time to gear up for the fall and break up into committees to try to focus our efforts and be a little more organized in how we move forward. Committees will meet monthly or bi-monthly as determined by the group. All committees will keep minutes and report back to the Executive Director (Andrea) and the larger group. See what sounds best to you and sign up here. THANK YOU!
Events Committee: If you like to plan and execute events, this committee is for you. You will determine when and what events happen throughout the year, and plan and execute these events, ensuring follow up on recurring events if applicable. So far, our 2019/ 2020 event schedule includes an Eat In (October), a Day of Advocacy at City Hall in early February, and March for Healthy School Food in June. This committee would also plan our fundraising events.
Community Outreach Committee: This committee will focus on how to mobilize diverse communities across New York City and engage more parents and stakeholders in our mission and movement. Whether you partner with community-based organizations, churches, or other nonprofits, you will work at getting the word out to as many families across the city as possible. You will also table at healthy food events and back to school events to get more folks engaged in the mission and participating in our events and advocacy work and bottom-up work in schools.
Social Media Committee: Can you write a great Instagram post? Are you really good at Twitter? Do you know how to create engagement through smart pithy collections of words and photographs? Then this is the committee for you! You will work on sourcing and creating content for blog posts, Facebook posts, Instagram, and Twitter posts. All posts will be kept in a shared drive. Posting will happen multiple times a week and would require being up to date on current events related to healthy school food.
Food Policy/Advocacy Committee: If you love to lobby and advocate, get on this committee! You will be connecting with local government employees to promote the NYC Healthy School Food Alliance agenda through meetings, letter writing campaigns, and creating ways for the larger group to get involved in pushing policy forward. You will work to develop a strategy for our four big picture platform asks and smaller more short term goals.
Grant Writing/Fundraising Committee: If you work in development or grant writing, please consider joining this committee. You will help support our mission by working on our budget and coming up with creative ways to fundraise from individuals, grants and other funding opportunities.
Ready to choose? Sign up here.
We will keep this survey open until September 13th.
Andrea
