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Sustainable Communities Network is a  commnity-based  non-profit organization located in Lexington, Ky that endeavors to educate, inspire, build, create and empower sustainable cities


Map of
 in Lexington, KY



Donations are welcome

2011 Fundraising Letter
with highlights of our work in 2010



      


 



We encourage you to read our

SCN Annual Report 2009

Back 2 Nature project Report

Youth GreenCorps Report

GROWLEX Community Garden Manual

God's Worms

God's Worms doc

IMMAG Concept Paper

SCN Presentations

School Garden Workshop

Sustainable World Sourcebook

Sustainable Communities Network contributed articles, photographs and quotes for this book.

 

Join the Bluegrass garden network!


For list of current Community Gardens  in Lexington,
garden

 

garden

 

garden

News Precedente

in collaboration with:

Regione Piemonte Slow Food Città di Torino Ministero delle politiche Agricole Ambientali e Forestali

Salone del Gusto - Terra Madre

Growing the Good (Slow) Food Revolution

From a very young age Jim Embry has been working to fight against social injustice and support those in difficulty. The Lexington Sustainable Communities Network, which he founded, is a hub of ideas, activities and projects: school gardens, food education, support programs for people who have been subjected to violence or are recovering from an addiction. We can never stop thanking Jim and those people who, like him, have made the Terra Madre dream possible.
 

You have been an activist involved in social justice from an early age, was the question of food production/consumption already an important part of the movement in the 1970's or is this something that has happened more recently? In your opinion are the social justice and food movements one?  
For many of us activists food production/consumption (food justice) was linked very closely to the social justice and peace movements of the 60’s and 70’s. In 1968 while attending Dr. King’s funeral I met labor activist
Green who offered me a summer job working in Brooklyn, NY and it was there that I was first introduced to the concept of what we now call food justice. In 1971 I met the Vietnam War protestor and comedian, Dick Gregory who further illuminated for me the politics of food and also inspired me to adopt a vegetarian diet as a political, spiritual, health and ecological statement. During the 70’s some 300 natural food co-ops were created and I was a founding member of the Good Foods Co-op here in Lexington which had a focus even back then on local, organic and healthy foods along with community gardening. But certainly in the past 20 years there has been an enormous global awakening to the detrimental effect that our industrial agriculture system and the fast food culture are having on the health of people and the planet. Yes in my view the social justice and food movements are linked at the hip. While the movement to create sustainable communities encompasses all of the social justice movements, a local and healthy  food system is the foundation for a sustainable community. However the prevailing Newtonian worldview leads us to think of Mother Earth as a bunch of unrelated mechanical parts to be exploited and abused. But I ascribe to quantum or systems thinking which teaches us that we are all inter-related, interdependent and all made from the same source. 

How did you come across Slow Food and Terra Madre and what compelled you to join?
In the spring of 2008 I received information from a friend about the Terra Madre gathering and its connection to Slow Food. After reading the on-line information, I immediately joined and fell in love because the concept and principles were absolutely consistent with my values and work. A few weeks later I applied and was later selected to attend Terra Madre later in October. My love and support for the Slow Food movement was deeply amplified by my experience at Terra Madre. 

Can you tell us more about the Lexington Sustainable Communities Network? How has the localLexington community responded to your initiatives? 
Sustainable Communities Network formed in 2006 is like a spider web of relationships that extend locally, nationally, internationally and maybe one day inter-galactically! Since we consider a local food system as the foundation of a sustainable community, we work with all sectors of the food system in re-creating sustainable connections with food that encompass political, ecological, social and spiritual dimensions. Over the past 6 years we have: hosted an annual local food summit, trained 300+ teachers to organize school gardens, inspired the creation of 40+ community gardens, sponsored a monthly food film series, provided workshops and retreats for the faith community, given 45+ talks a year on Slow Food, Terra Madre and food justice, wrote articles or  given interviews  to various media, helped plan several statewide and national conferences on food security, served on the local government Climate Action Plan Team, and guided efforts to create a food policy council
 Since we all come through women, since women provide the best first local food with breast milk and since women are the primary providers of food nutrition and education we have developed very substantial projects with women’s groups such as:  community gardens at Chrysalis House, the program for women healing from drug and alcohol addiction, gardens and nutrition classes at Family Care Center, the high school program for pregnant and parenting teenagers, garden and farm visioning for the Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program, the program for women healing from physical and emotional spouse abuse, and a children’s garden for the One Parent Scholar House, the program for single parents attending post secondary school.  

We have received tremendous support , involvement and requests for our services from every sector of the local community. Through our initiatives we work closely with K-12 schools, farmers, women’s programs, refugee groups, the judicial system, faith groups, local and state governments, food co-ops, universities, various local media and of course local producers! We have received numerous recognitions and awards, do about 45 community presentations

Do you think the number of so-called "co-producers" in the US is growing? Are people paying more attention to the story behind the food they eat? 
Yes! Without a doubt the number of co-producers is growing exponentially every year throughout the US. Our friend Wendell Berry said years ago «eating is an agricultural act» and many more people now understand and are manifesting the meaning of that profound statement.  Over the past 20 years we have witnessed a 50 per cent increase in farmers markets and CSAs, expansion of farm to cafeteria initiatives at K-12 schools, hospitals , universities, and even jails, local and organic foods available in many more groceries and restaurants demonstrating that Americans are expressing our desire for quality food that is produced in harmony with the environment and local cultures. 

Setting up a vegetable garden can seem like such a simple action, but in practice it can have a very strong impact. Why is it such a powerful instrument in your opinion? 
Last century the mantra was that we all needed to be computer literate but in this century because of the
ecological crisis and the human disconnect from nature we must now insure that we are all eco-literateworking and playing in a garden children before they can read or write can learn eco-literacy, not to fear bugs and bees, how to work together cooperatively and they learn how to become agents of change in their community. In the garden we get to touch the soil, the sacred medium that we are all made from and learn systems thinking. In my view beginning children working and playing in a garden is the most important foundational activity to teach sustainable living, citizenship, activism and sacred Earth connections.

What are you taking with you to Turin this October and what are you hoping to bring back?
Using extensive community outreach and education , I will take the love and activism from myself and my community to Turin. Before my previous trips in 2008 and 2010 I used various forms of media , gave numerous presentations and set up photo exhibits to inform my local community that I was a delegate to Terra Madre and inviting them to” travel with me”. This was my way of “taking the community with me” which I will do again this year. After another fabulous Terra Madre experience in October, I will bring back the love, the creativity, and the activism of the people that I will meet as well as the many memorable tastes of food in the Salone! This experience will be shared with my community through presentations, photo exhibits, articles and simple conversations about my own excited exclamations of the powerful Slow Food
each year and serve on numerous commissions and planning teams. with a sense of sacred relationship with the Earth. By communities around the world!


 

 




 

Lurisia Garofalo Lavazza Novamont Vodafone Intesa Sanpaolo
SLOW FOOD AND TERRA MADRE FOUNDATION SUPPORTER SUPPORTER BY WITH THE CONTRIBUTION OF

Jim Embry article #1 on CORE

http://issuu.com/cincinnati/docs/nky-c/84

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George W. Carver compliation

Shawnee Planning

NKU Sustainability

Embry 5th District Newsletter

Embry Key News Food Summit

 Embry WE-are-all-artists

 Embry Speech at Immigrant Rights Rally

Embry Publlic Republic

Embry Talk at Somerset Community College Terra Madre

Fresh Start Plan  Contributions(Jim Embry) 

Embry Web Articles
Embry Ace Articles
Brattleboro 100year plan

Hip Hop Vegan Group


Sam Levin 2008 Terra Madre


ACE Weekly download articles

Gardens of Eatin

Shovel Ready

Lexington Gardens Grow

Dig It: Gardens Root

HOBY Eco-Art 2009
HOBY Eco-Art 2008

Model of the Year
Closing the Food Gap


Greening of Bryan Station High School

Growing Food & Justice conference

Community Garden Tour Report

Gardening with Class

Bluegrass Food Security Summit 2010

The Great Work

The Great Turning

Farm to School

School gardens

Catherine Ferguson Academy

Catherine Ferguson "O" magazine article

Asenath Andrews

 Grown in Detroit_

Greening of Detroit

Food and Sacred Earth Connections

Religion and Environment

Closing the Food Gap 2008

Profile of State Food Policy Councils by State

Interactive Map of State Food Policy Councils


 Climate Change  portal information

Climate Change Books

African Americans Climate Change:Unequal Burden_REPORT

African Americans Climate Change Ex Summary

African Americans Climate Change Bullard Bibliography

Slow Food Newsletter