mission + values

In the fall of 2019 an Elder introduced co-founders AJ + Lillian under the guise that they would make good trouble together. The two started chatting and haven’t stopped since. Now we are  celebrating 5 years of them making good trouble together. 

When we originally were dreaming up EGC, we were planning on creating something that was more of a side project and focused on supporting Black + Brown Women and Femmes in the private sector with small grants, with cash mobs, networking, and collective trainings and other basic business support. And then the pandemic hit. AJ had been working with some local farmers and as a big fan of Dr. Booker T. Whatley and suggested we buy CSA boxes from local BIPOC farmers and give them away to local Black and Brown families. When we launched a fundraiser to do this, we raised over $35K in donations in a single week. AJ was like let’s double down, and we did. The community matched our excitement, and from there, things took off. By June of 2020 we were delivering CSA boxes to community members across the city, and we have been doing our food programming since. Today, we deliver to 225 Families a week and see another 180 at the Market each Thursday. 

How we move and have built our body of work is very intentional. The way we are reimagining our food system is from a proactive approach. Our mainstream current food system relies on shipping food all over the world which impacts freshness and nutritional value, as well as being a major carbon producer. 

Within typical emergency or crisis food systems most of the food distributed is gleaned or expired food, coming from the leftovers of our mainstream food system (think grocery stores). Not only is this morally inept as this practice of gleaning giving oppressed people expired or old food a direct practice from chattel slavery, this model creates a lot of waste. 

At EGC we want to see solutions and models that move us forward, that empower the community, that are sustainable and forward thinking.  EGC’s food system vision is focused on local and uplifting the most marginalized among us. By sourcing the food we distribute from local Black + Brown Farms and BUYING the produce we are able to ensure freshness and optimal nutritional value, we are helping to build economic power in our small community, and we are also able to help curb carbon impacts by leaning into our local agriculture community. Within our model we are able to both support our community and boost the local agriculture community. It is the win-win for us! 

Since our inception we have rolled out a variety of additional programming all inspired from community requests. We really have that call and response dialed down, and through the ways we have answered community needs we have not wavered from leading with pushing tangible resources out into the community. Our community, the Black Community is not looking for more talking or planning, we need action and tangible support.