Annual Report

Live Real is celebrating our first anniversary! Here are some highlights from our first year.

Real Food Fellowship

We brought together 9 young leaders from urban and rural communities to grow their skills. Learn about the great things that they did here.

For a Fair Farm Bill

Every 5 years, Congress passes legislation that decides where the money goes for our food and farming systems. We worked to make sure youth nationwide know what's up, and that their voices were heard. Together, we created a platform of our priorities that we used for letter writing and phone calls (members & allies from 40 states sent letters to their Senators!), and we testified before decision-makers to get our message across. We also co-convened the GOAT process (Getting Our Act Together), bringing together DC-based policy advocates and grassroots groups to ensure equity in the process and the policy, and coordinated this group in a Fair Farm Bill Twitter Storm, generating thousands of tweets to Congress. Check out this video we put together explaining the Bill, and take action with us today!

We had a lot of help along the way!

Thanks to our in-kind donors:

Our financial contributors:

Columbia Foundation
Mustard Seed Foundation
Small Planet Institute
and over 100 people who donated to our Kickstarter

And our former fiscal sponsor The Food Project.

Food & Freedom Rides

Last summer, we traveled over 3000 miles across 10 states from the Deep South to Detroit and from the Border to the Bay commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights era Freedom Rides. On our way, we met over 500 people working to transform the food system in their local communities, including Native youth, Black and Brown urban and rural farmers, farm and food processing workers, and people reviving connections to land, food, and culture. Check out the song we wrote, and our slideshow here.

Other Fabulous Things

Throughout the year, we supported our allies and led trainings to build skills. Here's a sampling:

We led workshops in local communities, on college campuses, and at conferences. Here's a sampling: the Allied Media Conference, the Community Food Security Coalition Conference, the Growing Food and Justice Gathering, the Green Festival, Justice Begins With Seeds Conference, the Minorities in Agriculture, Natural Resources, and Related Sciences Conference, Quivira Coalition Conference, Rooted In Community's Annual Conference and Winter Leadership Institute, at three University of California campuses, and WK Kellogg Foundation's Food and Community Conference.
We joined the Coalition of Immokalee Workers for their Fair Food Fast, and supported the Fair Food Campaign, helping to secure a victory with Trader Joe's and launch a nationwide campaign on Chipotle.
We helped convene the first gathering of the US Food Sovereignty Alliance.
We participated in the Ruckus Society's Nonviolent Direct Action Training focused on migrant rights to build our skills and escalate action for farm and food chain workers' rights.
We launched an online platform to bring youth across the country together to build our collective power to change the food system.