JLP Community Leadership and Outreach Committee & Public Affairs Committee hosted a discussion with food leaders from government, nonprofits, and local business on September 6 at the first General Membership Meeting of the league year.

“We are thought leaders and when 1,000 JLP ladies speak with the same voice everyone listens” True, Junior League of Phoenix may not give millions in grant money each year, but we don’t have to because our true power is in our collective 1,000 member voice on food issues.  I urge all JLP ladies to be thought leaders on food issues by using your JLP member voice to Tweet, Facebook, Snapchat, or blog about your support of food system development.– Cathy Brown, Chair (CLO).

Building a Healthy Arizona requires paying attention to everyone’s basic needs from a health perspective. In this regard, access to healthy foods is critical, and many stakeholders have focused on food.  Unfortunately, programs working in silos cannot do enough to address the issues that face the “food to table” industry and get healthy nutritious food in the tummies of all Arizonans.

Moving the needle will require us all to work together…New efforts have sprung up throughout Arizona with the goal of producing sustainable, local, healthy food resources in areas of production, distribution, recycling and legislative policy which allows all people to have access to healthy affordable food.

Based on the emergence of the Maricopa County Food Coalition, Junior League’s Community Leadership and Public Affairs Committee will host a community discussion on the successful work of the Coalition which includes more than 50 members from government, nonprofits, farming, transportation, business, schools, pre-schools, food pantries and many more.

The intent of the panel discussion is to:

1. Inform Junior Leagues 1,000 members of what is currently happening in the food system.
2. Highlight the importance of collectively working together to move the food, nutrition & access needle.

Highlight Junior League as a thought leader in this important area by encouraging our members to use their collective voice to support food system development, which supports our focus area to ensuring all Arizonans have access and information to healthy food.

Creating a Food System will Enable All People in our community to have access to healthy nutritious food and grow our local economy!  In the past many people worked on food access, but we had little impact because we were not working together.  When governments, organizations, businesses, and communities work together they have larger impact and create meaningful and long-lasting community change.