Community Design Center of Minnesota

The Community Design Center of Minnesota operates a year-round Youth Enterprise in Food and Ecology program for inner-city minority and immigrant youth aimed at helping them:

• improve their health through cooking and nutrition
• become environmental leaders and stewards
• develop work skills
• explore and pursue careers related to food and ecology

Program activities include:

• Family cooking/nutrition classes
• Garden corps and conservation corps internship programs
• a variety of environmental learning projects
• a leadership program

We are seeking support for a new program to provide cooking/nutrition classes and food tasting sessions for 1,200 - 1,400 fourth grade children and their parents at 23 St. Paul Elementary Schools. Our goal is to increase consumption of fruits, vegetables, and whole grains by at least one serving per day and to provide knowledge and skills to support eating behavior changes that will reduce obesity and related health problems.

Cornucopia Institute

The Cornucopia Institute is fighting for the integrity of organic farming and the authenticity of organic food.

We are spotlighting factory-farms using questionable production shortcuts - threatening the future of local organic farmers. Our national scorecard rating all organic dairy brands separates factory-farm (2,000 - 10,000 cows) and family farm brands, helping consumers and cooperatives support/reward ethical producers in the marketplace (www.cornucopia.org).

Soy imports from Brazilian rainforests and China are flooding the U.S. market. Our investigation and soy ratings will soon help consumers identify the best brands. Want to avoid "organic" eggs that come from henhouses confining 70,000 birds? Vegetables from China? Upcoming research will develop a tool to empower consumers and their cooperatives.

Cornucopia is uniting our family farmer-members with their consumer/urban allies and cooperatives to build grassroots pressure in Washington and the marketplace for authentic organic food. Help us win this struggle for the heart and soul of organics!

Eco Education

Eco Education (www.ecoeducation.org) is requesting funding for our "Urban Stewards" program during the 2007-08 school year. Our two Program Coordinators will work directly with teachers and their students in Minneapolis and St. Paul to implement this comprehensive, stepwise program that is woven into the required school curriculum, from beginning to end. Teachers in 12 schools will be trained during several Professional Development Institutes and receive ongoing support individually and within their classrooms throughout the school year.

At a time when it is difficult for students to take field trips because of school finances and teaching-fortesting constraints, Eco Education offers urban teachers and their students this opportunity to explore their local community and experience environmental issues first-hand through field trips and speakers who visit the classroom. Students will also learn about ecology and urban ecology, and then build skills to design and carry out a project to address one of the environmental issues in their community.

Eureka Recycling

Eureka Recycling will improve recycling and begin food waste composting programs that will help small and medium-sized businesses, like the Wedge Co-op. Businesses face many obstacles when they try to recycle their food scraps and non-recyclable papers through composting, like costs, logistic, staff training and customer education. This project focuses on identifying and overcoming these obstacles. Eureka Recycling will partner with neighborhood cafes, restaurants, co-ops and others to implement solutions and to articulate the benefits that these businesses experience through this project. This will allow other similar businesses to apply the lessons learned. This project is expected to build momentum for "organics recycling" throughout Minneapolis and spreading through the metro area, making businesses like the Wedge Community Co-op a leader in this next import step in serious waste reduction efforts, which result in serious carbon dioxide and methane reduction.

Farmers' Legal Action Group

Farmers' Legal Action Group, Inc., (FLAG) celebrated its 20th anniversary in 2006. We are a nonprofit law center in St. Paul that has helped thousands of family farmers succeed in their struggle to stay on the land. We seek Wedge members' support for our work advancing the cause of local and regional food systems. Working with partner organizations, FLAG will provide legal counsel, technical support and education to help family farmers who are growing and processing local food understand the local, state and federal regulations that are necessary to success. Wedge members know that eating local is healthier for consumers, farmers, rural economies and the environment. FLAG's mission under a WedgeShare grant would help establish wider resources and support for farmers, and help secure the long-term future for the production, sales and best of all, consumption of local foods.

Great Plains Windustry Project

Windustry (a non-profit working to increase wind energy opportunity for farmers and rural communities) is the primary provider of high-quality wind energy information and assistance to farmers and rural communities in the Midwest. Requests for Windustry's assistance have grown considerably recently as interest in renewable energy has exploded. There is great potential for wind energy to provide economic and social benefits to Minnesotan and Midwestern farmers and rural communities, but these benefits will be maximized only if farmers and rural communities have high quality, up-to-date, easily accessible information to help them make informed choices. Windustry is requesting support for increased outreach and education efforts to the rural Midwest through our Wind Information Hotline and Wind Farmers Network online forum. The same farmers that supply the Wedge with high quality organic food may have the potential to produce high quality, clean electricity as well, and we want to help them achieve this!

Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy

Founded in 1986, the Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy (IATP) educates and assists individuals and groups working for a just and sustainable world. Our mission is to work globally and locally to promote resilient family farms, communities and ecosystems through research and education, science and technology, and advocacy. Over the past several years, we have worked extensively on Minnesota-based food system projects, including a project to initiate several small farms' markets in low-income neighborhoods in south Minneapolis.

With a WedgeShare grant, IATP will build on its past work in helping residents of underserved neighborhoods gain access to healthy foods. By establishing mini-farmers' markets in these neighborhoods, we will provide a viable food outlet where low-income residents can purchase the fresh fruits and vegetables that are often unavailable to them. We will also improve city policy as it relates to food and remove barriers to fresh food for all citizens.

Land Stewardship Project

Land Stewardship Project (LSP) organizes Minnesotans to make their voices heard and have an impact on the decisions that affect our food and agricultural system. Whether organizing in local communities and stopping specific factory farms, promoting sound public policy that supports family farms and the environment, or assisting new sustainable farmers, LSP's members set the direction and priorities for the organization.

LSP's Healthy Farms, Healthy Foods project aims to build the Minnesota's infrastructure to help family farms raise healthful food while caring for the land. The project will also work to further restrict the use of harmful chemicals in agriculture, including atrazine.

LSP's mission is to foster an ethic of stewardship for farmland, to promote sustainable agriculture, and to develop sustainable communities. Founded in 1982, we are a membership organization based in Minnesota with about 30% of our membership living in the metro area and 70% in rural communities.

Local Fair Trade Network

The Local Fair Trade Network (LFTN) builds on the foundation created by the organic food, farm worker and cooperative movements, bringing together the growers, sellers and eaters of food to cooperatively build a food system that is just and healthy for everyone. Based in Minneapolis, LFTN focuses its work on the Upper Midwest and aims to be a model for the creation of other regional Fair Trade bodies.

Our Leadership Development Program will increase the power of farmers, farm workers, retail workers and consumers by supporting the emergence of leadership within each of these constituencies. Through this program, we will create spaces for our constituents to speak to and influence the goals and methods of the Domestic Fair Trade movement. This program will include creation of Fair Trade standards for retailers through a participatory process that includes co-op managers, workers, board members and members.

Midtown Farmers' Market

The Midtown Farmers' Market features local products from Minnesota and Wisconsin farmers, food producers and artists in a lively and diverse community gathering space in South Minneapolis. The market is sustained by the work of our staff and our strong base of community volunteers, who came together out of the desire to create a source of local and sustainable foods in their neighborhoods.

The Promotion Project would increase our visibility in our immediate community and beyond, build our customer base, and make local foods fun and accessible. The project will increase health, directly support local farmers and create a more vibrant local food system.

We will host a series of food events featuring local celebrity chefs or highlighting particular vegetables. We also will host a spring/summer marketing intern to increase our marketing capacity, working closely with market volunteers and staff to ensure that the efforts are sustainable.

Powderhorn Empty Bowls

Powerhorn Empty Bowls was started in December of 2006 by five neighbors and potters who met at the Powderhorn Park Pottery Program. Joined by many other neighbors who also take pottery at the Park, we make up a group who want to use our creative energies to make a difference in our neighborhood for those who are less fortunate.

The idea of Empty Bowls is that potters contribute bowls they've made and others contribute soup and bread for a simple meal. Everyone who comes chooses a bowl to have his or her soup in and makes a modest donation that is combined with matching gifts and grants, such as the one we hope might come from the Wedge, and given to the organizations in the neighborhood that are actually feeding people or helping to educate about the issue of hunger in our midst. An important part of the event is that everyone leaves with her or his hand-made bowl, which is now empty and will always serve as a reminder of the need of others in the neighborhood.

One would say - Why not just give directly to the organizations that are feeding people? But that would miss the point and power of the Empty Bowl meal, which brings us together, provides a way for us to use our creativity to give back to each other, and creates a bond of awareness and caring for each other that can only happen when you sit down to break bread together. There are empty bowls in our neighborhood, and we intend to fill them in our own neighborly way.

Urban Earth Flower & Garden Cooperative

Urban Earth Flower and Garden Cooperative is a member-owned, local floral and garden store. We are committed to promoting organic and native plants, to supporting local growers and businesses and to building our community by offering classes and events and working with our neighboring businesses. We opened in October 2006 without capital other than membership fees. We have run successfully in our first 9 months with the dedication of board members, staff and volunteers. However, we are at a point where we need an investment in developing our business infrastructure in order to take our cooperative to the next level. We will use the WedgeShare grant to develop a strategic plan, to substantially increase our membership by advertising, increasing our product offerings and increasing our visibility as an environmentally-friendly flower and garden store. We will also use the funds to increase our community and education events in the coming year.

Youth Farm & Market Project

The Youth Farm and Market project will use any WedgeShare funds we receive in support of our mission to nurture relationships between urban youth and their families, their communities and the earth around them by growing, cooking, eating and selling healthy food. Within our three main focus areas of Urban Agriculture, Youth Organizing and Cultural Nutrition, we will use WedgeShare funds to support the following goals:

• to increase youth competencies and qualities needed to be successful in life and work
• to help youth develop public skills through community building projects
• to set youth on the road to lifelong health using local, traditional and cultural foods; and
• to provide high quality, culturally-appropriate foods for people in low income communities