What We Expect From Fellows

Hours may vary week to week, but fellows can expect to spend 3-5 hours a week on the fellowship. This will include:

• Attendance and participation at:
• an in-person Fellowship orientation, June 24-26.
• monthly phone/web meetings with peer-to-peer learning and sharing and reflection pieces, beginning June 2011.
• Contribute to Live Real media, through blogging, social media, etc.
• Outreach, education, and networking to deepen and broaden the food movement by hosting at least one community event.
• Producing a creative media project.

Optional and encouraged:

• Attendance and participation in Live Real’s Food and Freedom Ride, commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Freedom Rides, on August 9-19.
• Conferences related to social justice and food systems

More information about outreach, education, and networking

One part of your work as a Fellow will be to grow the food justice movement in your community by:

• expanding the circle of people, especially—but not exclusively—young people, who self-identify as part of a national movement (Live Real was designed to offer those people a place to belong and connect);
• connecting them to each other, including groups that don’t typically talk;
• identifying new leaders for upcoming campaigns, such as the 2012 Farm Bill.  The Fellowship will equip you with a set of ideas, frameworks, and actions that will enable you to go out and do presentations, workshops, or organize events—whichever best fit your situation.

More information about the creative media project

Another part of your work is a creative project producing and/or using media that changes and elevates the discussion about food—nationally and/or in your community.  Media includes video, visual art, writing, music, and perhaps some art forms that we haven’t listed!

The medium is not as important as the idea behind it.  Consider: What is a story about real food/food justice/living real that you want the world to know about?  What voices or perspectives do you think are under-represented?  What fresh insights can you bring from yourself or your community?  Be creative, feel free to think big, and utilize humor or emotion.

The key is that it accomplishes one or more of the following:

• it moves more people to get involved;
• it increases public knowledge by filling in gaps of knowledge, making complex issues more understood, or connecting different issues;
• it elevates the work that others are already doing by promoting it through creative expression or by giving it wider exposure.

You can imagine this will take two to nine months of part-time work to put together.  You can also imagine this project supporting your community outreach and education work—and it might support others as well.  Here are some possibilities and ideas to stimulate your thinking, but please don’t let these limit you:

• A short video that illustrates the effect of diabetes in your community.  Here are a couple of other videos that can spark your creativity: Bodega Down Bronx, Ode to Monsanto.
• Organize a boycott against supermarkets that support unfair labor practices.
• A “soundtrack” for the movement.  Here’s an example from Wil Bullock.

Note: although the media can vary, ideally we want to be able to document your project digitally so it can be shared more widely.  We will provide support for this.