Menu
DC Greens believes that access to healthy food is a basic human right. The team works to make systemic shifts to healthy food access by advancing community-led solutions in order to change the conditions that have historically held inequities in place. In their eight years of administering the DC Health-funded Produce Plus program, DC Greens sought to center participant feedback to ensure the program was both an economic driver for regional farmers and an affordable and accessible opportunity for low-income communities to shop for produce. While the organization has had a long-standing focus on advancing racial justice, as their work progressed, they recognized that to authentically shift external systems, they needed to ensure that their internal staff, policies and culture reflected their commitment to equity.
Therefore, DC Greens has spent the past four years looking inward, examining ways in which the organization could better center racial equity at the core of its work. This internal reflection resulted in a commitment to be a more transparent, just and accountable organization. From new hiring practices that place as much value on lived experiences as on higher-education credentials to a compensation structure that considers each position’s emotional burden, DC Greens is modeling what it means to adhere to principles of racial equity internally.
Known as a “food organization” since its inception 12 years ago, DC Greens is now focusing more intentionally on health equity as an orienting framework, acknowledging systemic racism as the primary barrier to good health. Its strategy directs programming to address the intersection of food access, health disparities and racial oppression.
Another focus of DC Greens’ racial equity work is what it calls “resource transfer.” Through this work, staff use internal resources and capacity to create direct connections between person-of-color-led organizations and the resources of the philanthropic and corporate communities. As Divinity Pittman, Foundation Relations Manager for DC Greens, explains, “There are a lot of reasons why person-of-color-led organizations have not been able to access resources — the lack of connections and the lack of staff time to write proposals being two. We have used our position within the nonprofit community to talk directly with our funders to elevate the names of organizations that need the support.”
“The people within the communities and the organizations have the expertise. When you combine that with the resources of funders and individuals and corporations, they unlock our collective vision and potential for the future. But without one or the other, it is difficult to attain.”
This practice marries community expertise with resources in order to create change. “The people within the communities and the organizations have the expertise. When you combine that with the resources of funders and individuals and corporations, they unlock our collective vision and potential for the future. But without one or the other, it is difficult to attain,” concludes Pittman.
DC Greens has taken concrete steps to develop internal processes that center racial equity, resulting in an organization transformed and well-positioned to advance health equity through efforts to build a just and resilient food system.