Thursday, July 17, 2014

Tweets and Pictures from the First Day of the End Hunger in New Mexico Summit

I wish I could say there were a lot of tweets from the first day of the End Hunger in New Mexico Summit.  I couldn't find any tweets but my own.(I don't think there was a hashtag designated for the summit, so I created my own: #EndhungerNewMexico). I later found out that Roadrunner Foodbank was tweeting under the hashtag #hungersummit2014

My tweets came after the fact because I couldn't get a Wi-fi connection on my smart phone at the site of the summit.

Anyway, I'm using my tweets and some photos to relate what I thought were personal highlights at the summit.  These tweets are not in chronological order, but I placed them in an order that would best tell my story.  And each tweet reflects a theme.

Economic Justice
Mark Winne, author and food-justice advocate,  was the keynote speaker during lunch.  Winne said we've been down this road before--a similar gathering in 2003 brought together people from a broad range of non-profits, government agencies and the private sector, and yet it doesn't look like we've made much progress. While there are many reasons for this situation, Winne says a central problem is that we have not worked with the right priorities


Alicia Edwards, Executive Director of the Volunteer Center of Grant County, also spoke about a lack or priorities in a workshop. She said we've been stuck in a band-aid mode, and we need to look at transforming our economic system. And even our approach to the immediate feeding solutions is misguided. For example, she said, when we put a food box together, the word that should come to mind should not be food, but meals.

Lieutenant Gov. Chewiwi
Investment in the Future
Lieutenant Governor Antonio Chewiwi at Isleta Pueblo (where the conference was held), presented the organizers of the conference with a gift: a small clay pot to hold seeds.

This was a highly symbolic and appropriate gift, since seeds are a symbol of future growth, and the small pot was a place to hold this future growth.

Mayor Berry
 Private-Public Model
Mayor Richard J. Berry, spoke about a broad range of interests coming together in the our largest city in New Mexico to address important issues like homelessness (though the Albuquerque Heading Home program) and hunger. Mayor Berry spoke about empowering all citizens to attain economic mobility.

The mayor mentioned that Albuquerque is one of five cities selected for a special grant under the national Living Cities Integration Initiative.  The program promotes "a new type of type of urban practice focused on addressing income inequality and disparate access to opportunity at a systems level,” according to Ben Hecht, president and CEO of Living Cities. Watch for a future blog post on the initiative in this blog 
A Tweet from Roadrunner Food Bank
The Bottom Line
Tim Armer, executive director of the North Central New Mexico Economic Development District (one of the organizations sponsoring the conference) said it best.
Like all summits and conferences, this one was packed with information and speeches, so this is the tip of the iceberg. And there's more tomorrow, so watch for a blog post for the second day of the summit.

2 comments:

Michelle Meaders said...

"The Bottom Line
Tim Armer, executive director of the North Central New Mexico Economic Development District (one of the organizations sponsoring the conference) said it best."

well?

BreadNM Blog said...

Michelle. The embedded tweet is right below.