Community & Projects
Goal 1
HEALTHY FOOD ACCESS
Food is nutritious, accessible, affordable, and culturally desirable for all members of our community.
Objective 1: Increase availability of and access to affordable, culturally preferred, nutritious foods
Project 1.1.2: Small Food Retailers
We provide our local food retailers outreach and assistance to better be able to stock nutritious options while offering storeowners incentives (such as stipends, tax credits, or grants), free equipment, and technical support to nudge healthy choices, accept federal food benefits, and provide attractive merchandising and adequate refrigeration.
Outcome: Providing small retailers with tax credits, grants, and technical assistance can strengthen neighborhood food sovereignty while supporting local economic stability. These investments help retailers expand healthy and culturally relevant food offerings, reduce operational costs, and increase sales and customer traffic. Communities benefit from lower food prices, improved access to fresh and nutritious foods close to home, and stronger connections between retailers, food pantries, and food assistance programs. Over time, these efforts can reduce food access disparities, improve community health outcomes, and build more resilient, equitable local food systems.
Objective 2: Maximize participation, cultural competency, and nutritious options in food access programs
Project 1.2.3: Farmers Markets
We explore and share best practices, tools, relationships, and resources, designed for farmers markets to serve the communities traditionally oppressed and excluded from traditional farmers markets. We assist our local markets in ways to expand their reach and allow for all communities to have access to fresh, local foods they desire.
Outcome: Ensuring all farmers markets in Boulder and Broomfield Counties accept SNAP, WIC, Senior Farmers Market Nutrition Program vouchers, and Colorado SNAP Produce Bonus tokens builds our local food systems and economic resiliency while also creating fun, diverse community places for fun and belonging.
Project 1.2.6: Collaborative Purchasing
We’ve created a network of partners to collaboratively and equitably purchase more local, healthy and culturally relevant foods for our community. This regionally vibrant purchasing network also grows our local economy.
Outcome: Collaborative purchasing across the hunger relief system has fostered positive impact on community well-being, our local food system and food economy, and our environment. Featuring these healthy, fresh foods also reduces stigma traditionally associated with food pantry use by conveying respect for the community.
Objective 1: Grow the viability of local producers and food entrepreneurs
Project 2.1.2: Remove Nuisance Ordinances
We work on identifying and addressing local policies, codes, and enforcement practices that create barriers to growing food in our neighborhoods and community spaces. We work collaboratively with community, local governments, and growers to review existing ordinances related to gardens, chickens, front-yard growing, water use, fencing, and land access. Our work includes researching best practices, gathering community input, educating policymakers, advocating for equitable policy changes, and developing recommendations that support safe, sustainable, and accessible food production.
Outcome: We aim to create more supportive environments for households and communities to grow food while advancing food access, environmental sustainability, and neighborhood resilience. Removing nuisance ordinances that restrict food growing can increase community access to fresh, affordable, and culturally relevant foods while empowering residents to participate in local food production. These policy changes support household food security, reduce barriers to gardening and urban agriculture, and create greener, healthier neighborhoods. Allowing people, community organizations, and small growers to cultivate food supports local economies through expanded opportunities for small-scale food production and sharing.
Goal 2
FOOD INFRASTRUCTURE
Our local food system infrastructure, including locally owned food and farm enterprises, has the capacity needed to grow, process, store, distribute, and prepare the nutritious, culturally desirable, affordable food we want and need.
Goal 3
FOOD SOVEREIGNTY
Our local food system is equitable—developed, led by, cared for, owned by, and maintained by the people, with the people.
Objective 1: Build and maintain a local food systems coalition
We focus on building and sustaining an inclusive network of community members, organizations, advocates, businesses, institutions, and public agencies working toward shared food systems goals. The group works to foster meaningful participation, strengthen relationships across sectors, elevate community voices, and create trusting, collaborative spaces for learning, coordination, and action. Their efforts may include outreach and engagement, facilitation of meetings and events, building trust and transparency, leadership development, shared agenda-setting, and ensuring diverse perspectives are represented in decision-making processes related to food systems change.
Outcome: Our intent is to strengthen collaboration across sectors and build the collective power needed to advance meaningful food systems change. We work to build stronger relationships and trust among community members, organizations, institutions, and decision-makers; increase coordination and resource-sharing; and more equitable representation within food systems planning and policy discussions. Aligning priorities, amplifying community voices, fostering innovative solutions, and improving the effectiveness and sustainability of collective action can lead to more responsive policies, stronger community leadership, increased investment in local food systems, and lasting systemic change that better reflects the needs and priorities of our community.
Project 3.1.4: Trust and Collaboration
Objective 1: Increase availability of food skills learning opportunities across the community
We are committed to understanding and strengthening food skills education opportunities across both counties. We will conduct an inventory of existing programs, organizations, and initiatives related to cooking, nutrition, gardening, food preservation, cultural food traditions, budgeting, and other food-related skills to better understand who is being served, what topics are being covered, and where gaps exist.
Outcome: We will identify underserved populations, missing educational opportunities, and areas for collaboration, coordination, and investment throughout our 2 counties. This initiative will also lead to elevating existing community assets, strengthening partnerships among providers, and developing recommendations and next steps to expand equitable access to culturally relevant food skills learning opportunities. We also will be able to identify underserved populations and geographic areas lacking resources, inform future funding and program development, reduce duplication of efforts, and strengthen the overall capacity of the local food system to support long-term food security, health, and self-sufficiency.
Project 4.1.1: Food Skills Mapping
