Cultures of Resistance

Too often grant-making organizations and charities are coming up with well-intentioned policies around local food issues, but they don't have close enough relationships with groups that are already doing groundbreaking organizing in their communities. CoR has long been inspired by Grassroots International because it has provided a model of how to instead implement a bottom-up approach to grant-making. This on-the-ground mentality has carried into their work on Food justice, an issue that is one of the central concerns of the CoR network. Grassroots International has a special focus on food and indigenous justice, supporting movements in Africa, Meso-America, the United States, Brazil, Haiti, and the Middle East.

Grassroots understands that "the ability to provide food and a healthy environment for oneself and one’s family—including future generations—is fundamental for a dignified life." Committed to "honoring the knowledge, culture and desires of the world’s vast rural majority" who make up nearly 80% of the world's poor population, Grassroots uses their resources to support community-led sustainable development projects that address, at their root, the marginalization of indigenous peoples (with a special emphasis on women). Giving special priority to "community-based projects that enable gender justice and equality," they work to help groups organizing around a vast array of food justice issues: "soil conservation, watershed protection, reforestation, training and implementation or replication of environmentally and culturally appropriate local technologies, including agrobiodiversity conservation."

To see find out more about Grassroots International's work, click here.

Saulo Araújo, Grassroots' program coordinator for Latin America, has begun a blog series called Field Notes, chronicling fights for food justice happening now all across Latin America. Click on each link to be taken to the blog posts.

Central American Peasant School Teaches Us Lessons—The first in the series of Field Notes blog posts, Saulo chronicles the work of Via Campesina’s Central American Peasant School, located in the outskirts of Managua, Nicaragua.

Women Land Rights in Honduras—Part two of the series follows the work of the women of El Estribo, a rural community in Honduras, fighting to use public land for public benefit.

Indigenous Farmers held Hostage in Guatemala: Economically and Literally—In his third blog installment, Saulo takes us to Guatemala, where he chronicles the struggles of landless peasants traveling far from home to make a living, who are instead held hostage by bands of thugs, trained at the infamous Western Hemisphere Institute for Security Cooperation (WHINSEC) (formerly the School of the Americas).

Note: To find out more about WHINESEC and what you can do to take action, check out CoR ally School of the America's Watch on their website.