Tomorrow is Election Day 2012!

From the Iowa Oxfam Action Corps blog.

You’ve seen the advertisements. You’ve likely been subject to a dizzying array of phone calls from your local field office – they want your vote. And the news media is covering and analyzing the candidates and their every sneeze. The pieces on the “chessboard” of the American political landscape have been set. November 6^th is Election Day in the United States of America. 

And there’s a lot at stake as it concerns feeding a growing population: international affairs, foreign aid, The Farm Bill, etc. Sadly, though, very little focus was given to these topics especially during the foreign policy debate. Our friends over at ONE.org asked President Obama and Governor Romney (the front-runners in the race for POTUS) what, if elected, they would do to combat extreme poverty and preventable disease. Read their answers here. 

While Oxfam America is non-partisan and does not (and will not) endorse any candidate running for political office, we do strongly encourage our supporters to vote on November 6th. 

If you need help finding your polling location, click here.

Happy Voting!

Action Corps Offers Up Awesome October!

Through the month of October the Oxfam Action Corps has come out stronger than ever before. With 18 self-organized events and participation in over 50 events during the course of the month, October has been one of the most active and successful months yet. Not only has the Action Corps hosted and organized a World Food Day event in each of the 15 cities, each city was also the host to several World Food Day dinners each. Together, the 15 separate Action Corps branches conquered and surpassed our 300 Action Corps dinner goal with an astonishing total of 365 dinners! Wow! 

Take a look at some of the events that helped us smash our 300 dinner goal:

Albuquerque participated in Bread for New Mexico’s dinner and prayer circle and had a community dinner using leftovers from a local farmers market!

At the World Food Day event in Columbus!

The Farmer’s Tour trailed across the eastern US, allowing speakers Susan Godwin, Oxfam America’s Food Hero 2012, and Dienaba Diallo to speak on panels in South Carolina, DC, New York, Pennsylvania, Columbus, and ended in Des Moines, Iowa at the World Food Prize!

The World Food Prize brought great minds together to learn about the newest innovations in agriculture and what they mean for our planet’s food security. The Iowa Action Corps (plus volunteers from around the country) were there, stopping for tea with some of food’s finest thinkers!

Tabling at the World Food Prize

Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, Chicago, and Albuquerque munched on some GROW friendly eats at their own Grubwithus dinner! 

The poster for Minneapolis' benefit concert!

Minneapolis jammed to some tunes to raise money for the Sahel at a benefit concert before hosting a public potluck for World Food Day!


Indianapolis hosted a Congressional Forum to discuss food issues, while Burlington added a GROW theme to a local benefit dinner! 

San Francisco had a GROW themed gala to cheer on the Giants, while Madison partnered with Slow Food at the University of Wisconsin for a meal of 100+! Austin hosted a GROW meal in the park, while Kansas City hosted a public potluck.

An Austin volunteer promotes World Food Day dinners!

From coast to coast, each Action Corps city had a role in our huge successes this month. These events are only a small sample of all the incredible things that the Action Corps accomplished for Oxfam America this World Food Day! And things aren’t slowing down yet- the Action Corps is going full force ahead into November with more events, tabling, and Oxfam America Hunger Banquets on the way! Click “Join Us” in the upper left hand corner to sign up for local updates and learn more about what your city’s Action Corps has in the works! To learn more about Oxfam America, click here.

Here are some more photos from World Food Day festivities around the country!

Columbus event attendees munch on local eats!

An Albuquerque volunteer enjoys some World Food Day snacks!

Tabling at the World Food Prize

NYC Action Corps at a GROW themed potluck

Columbus World Food Day Recap!

Check out this great blog from the Columbus Action Corps!  For World Food Day 2012, Columbus helped to host a fantastic event with panelists Susan Godwin, a Nigerian farmer, Bryn Bird, a local farmer, and Noreen Warnock, the founder of Local Matters.  For more on the great things happening in Columbus, check out their blog here: http://columbus.oxfamactioncorps.org

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By the Columbus Oxfam Action Corps

After conquering a few technical issues, I am proud to finally showcase a selection of photos from our World Food Day dinner from Friday, Oct. 12. My sincere apologies for the delay, but better late than never as the saying goes.

All the photos were taken by first-time Oxfam volunteer Ryan Gaffke who attended the event with his wife, Louise Davis.

This is a photo of the entrance to the Whetstone Park of Roses Shelterhouse that served as the location for  the Columbus Oxfam Action Corps and Local Matters World Food Day Dinner 2012.

 Oxfam Action Corps Co-leader Djeynaba Be directed our guests to information about Oxfam America and the Grow Method in particular. She, with assistance from volunteers Nancy, Ritsu and Louise, signed up 37 people to learn more about Oxfam America.

Volunteer photographer Ryan Gaffke took this fantastic photo of the only family to attend the event. It's wonderful to see toddlers learning about using their resources wisely and knowing where the next meal is coming from. 

Adam Olson, regional advocacy leader for Oxfam America, provided the introductory remarks for the World Food Day dinner. He introduced Nigerian farmer Susan Godwin, local farmer Bryn Bird, and Local Matters Co-founder Noreen Warnock.

 Oxfam CHANGE Leader Evan Boyle and other attendees helped themselves to a buffet of salad, bread, butter and pasta primavera made from locally sourced produce.

 Local Matters Co-Founder Noreen Warnock stands next to Nigerian farmer Susan Godwin and Godwin's traveling companion after the event. The ladies had a long day of traveling and talking but maintained a merry disposition throughout the evening.

So, so many people spent hours helping our Word Food Day dinner event go smoothly. Unfortunately, not everyone could fit into a single photo. The people in this photo represent a few of the many hands and minds that went into crafting the event. We applaud all their efforts!

The World Food Prize Recap!

The Iowa Action Recaps the World Food Prize, one of the most prominent events in Agriculture and one of the Action Corp's most important and influential events!  For more on the Iowa Action Corps and the World Food Prize, visit their blog here.

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On Sunday, October 14th, we started “World Food Prize Week” with a Des Moines Area Sisters on the Planet potluck. We were able to hear from the 2012 Female Food Hero Susan Godwin fromNigeria about the challenges she and her community has overcome such as changing market demand for products, low prices offered by middlemen buyers, and weak institutional support for smallholder farmers.

Tuesday, October 16th, was the kickoff of the Iowa Hunger Summit. Howard G. Buffet (yes, that Buffet!) was the keynote speaker and spoke to a room of 700 about the fight against world hunger. He said, “The solution is not setting goals and campaigns, the solution is changing our mindsets…When I started, I thought if we could produce more, we could feed more people. I was wrong.”


Wednesday, October 17th was the kickoff of the 2012 Borlaug Dialogue at the Downtown Des Moines Marriott. For three days (well, two and a half), leaders, panelists, and other stakeholders gathered to discuss the variety of ways that partnerships lead to food security and how to set an agenda that feeds the world. Oxfam America hosted a GROW luncheon and we, the Iowa Action Corps, had a great dinner with the Oxfam staff. We spent the day tabling, asking folks to sign-on to our World Food Day Dinners, and sharing a “tea time”.



Thursday, October 18th was another day of the 2012 Borlaug Dialogue and the evening saw the Laureate Award Ceremony at the Iowa State Capitol Building. Watch the recorded version here. Great speeches all around! We were excited to have such honored guests (like the U.N.Secretary General) in Iowa!

Friday, October 19th we traveled to Marshalltown Community College and visited their Rural Entrepreneurship Incubator (REI) and student gardens on campus. We heard about “Harvest from the Heart of Iowa” – an initiative to bring local producers and distributors of Central Iowa together as a resource for the community. That evening, we traveled back to Des Moines to experience the Global Youth Institute’s Oxfam America Hunger Banquet. 300 students from all over the country (and others) gathered to experience our world’s food security problem.

Saturday, October 20th saw the departure of our beloved Action Corps visitors and Oxfam staff. We spoke with many visitors at our table at the Downtown Farmers Market and had a chance to share the GROW Method with them. Farmers markets are so much fun and a great way to show people first-hand how their purchases benefit small farmers. We had a sample platter with fair trade chocolates and locally-grown and chemical free sweet peppers, spinach, and apples.

Whew! Can you really be exhausted and rejuvenated at the same time? (The answer is yes!) So many thanks to our fabulous volunteers for their time and energy over the long week and we have many exciting things coming up for our month of November! Hope you can join us! If you haven't signed our pledge and would like to get involved, email us here. Don't be shy - we'd love to have your support.

Oxfam Action Corps at the Prize!

Circle of Protection Success!

Republished from Bread New Mexico Blog by Carlos Navarro.
To learn more about the New Mexico Action Corps check out their blog here!

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A Circle of Protection Vigil: Prayer, Songs and Letters

There were 30 to 35 people gathered at Immanuel Presbyterian Church in Albuquerque for our Circle of Protection prayer vigil on the second Saturday of October. Just as we did with a similar vigil last year, we had intended to start outside on the front porch of the church with candles and the song Come and Fill But the wind gusts were too strong and they would have extinguished our candles. So we decided to start inside in the chapel where we could better center ourselves. 

Surely enough, the calm, quiet wind of the Spirit was present inside in our prayers and reflections and songs from Taizé. We reflected on hunger, poverty, justice and inequality, just as we did last year. And the Circle of Protection campaign remained the focus of our prayers and reflections.

In our reflections, we put some emphasis on the mini campaigns in Bread for the World's 2012 Offering of Letters. And we invited representatives or volunteers from partner organizations to join us in the reflections: New Mexico Oxfam Action Corps, Roadrunner Food Bank, Medical Mission Board, Interfaith Power and Light (representing the National Council of Churches) and Sojourners.

And just as we did last year, we followed our vigil with an opportunity for action. In 2011, we signed letters to five individuals seeking to represent the New Mexico First Congressional District in the U.S. House of Representatives. Afterwards, we held face-to-face meetings with each of those candidates, who had yet to square off in their respective party's primary election.

The letters this year were to the candidates who won their primaries for the U.S. Senate and for the First Congressional District. (And for good measure,we included a third-party Senate candidate and two declared write-in candidates). We have arranged to bring the letters to the campaign headquarters of most of the candidates on Wednesday, October 24. We have requested a meeting with a ranking member of each campaign. Stay tuned for more details.

A heartfelt thanks to Rene Ronquillo for spending the evening snapping all the beautiful images contained in this blog post.

Michaela Bruzzese (Sojouners)

Sharon Barefoot served as a nurse in Haiti

Kalen Olsen and Jasmine McBeath talk about Oxfam's GROW Campaign

The reception featured fair-trade baked goods

Heisman Trophy or World Food Prize?

Entry #1 in a 3-part series on World Food Day from the Iowa Action Corps. Check out Iowa's blog for more pictures and stories from the World Food Prize and the World Food Festival!

In my opinion, the World Food Prize (WFP) is to food as the Heisman Trophy is to collegiate football. Where the Heisman Trophy is awarded to the most outstanding college football player whose “performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence”, the WFP is awarded to an individual whose contribution (also see: performance) has advanced human development in improving (also see: pursuit) the quality, quantity or availability of food in the world (also see: excellent).

I couldn't find a picture of a Quaterback
throwing an ear of corn, so just
imagine the football in this trophy is
actually a watermelon :-)

Before we delve too far into what the WFP is today, let’s take a time-out and learn about where it started: a scientist growing wheat.

In 1944, Dr. Norman E. Borlaug participated in the Rockefeller Foundation's pioneering technical assistance program in Mexico, where he was a research scientist in charge of wheat improvement. For over sixteen years, he worked to solve a series of wheat production problems that were limiting wheat cultivation in Mexico and to help train a whole generation of young Mexican scientists.

The work in Mexico not only had a profound impact on Dr. Borlaug's life and philosophy of agriculture research and development, but also on agricultural production, first in Mexico and later in many parts of the world. It was on the research stations and farmers' fields of Mexico that Dr. Borlaug scored touchdowns by growing wheat varieties with high disease resistance, broad adaptation to growing conditions, and exceedingly high yields.

These new wheat varieties and improved crop management practices transformed agricultural production in Mexico during the 1940's and 1950's and later in Asia and Latin America, sparking what today is known as the "Green Revolution." Because of his achievements to prevent hunger globally, it is said that Dr. Borlaug has "saved more lives than any other person who has ever lived."

Dr. Borlaug, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize for his work, envisioned a prize that would honor those who have made significant and measurable contributions to improving the world's food supply. Beyond recognizing these people for their accomplishments, Borlaug saw “The Prize” as a means of inspiring others. And thus, the World Food Prize was born.

There’s no telling if Dr. Borlaug would have won a Heisman Trophy had he made different career choices, but it can be safely said that this most-valuable player continues to lend his spirit for food justice in the years after his death (a “passing” football/death reference would have been in rather poor taste, sorry!).

Stay tuned for more!

Albuquerque Gets Into GROW!

Restaurants and Community Come together over World Food Day Dinners! 

By Jasmine Mcbeath

I have to admit that I wasn't the one that came up with the idea. The idea began with a local farmer at the downtown market and evolved with each collaborator. A little over a month ago, I was speaking with Jeremiah from Frost Hill Organics about Oxfam's potential partnerships with successful local growers and producers, such as La Montañita Coop, Los Poblanos, and Farm and Table. He looked at me with honest eyes and pointed out that while it's great to partner with large, established farms, markets, and restaurants, we shouldn't forget the little guys. Oxfam is all about supporting those small-scale farmers, after all. Jeremiah suggested using his leftover produce as a good start. Instead of composting his extra veggies, Oxfam could make a small GROW Meal out of them. Soon a dozen other farmers were on board, and the intimate GROW Meal had evolved into a community dinner for a hundred. Then at the last booth, a buyer overheard my conversation with Macias Farm and asked to coordinate the meal preparation. She started freezing leftover produce that day onwards and calls once a week to let me know what new recipes are in store for guests. Clubs on campus and groups of faith joined in too. Community Bricolage, Bread for the World, Nourish International, and Food Corps are all teaming up with Oxfam. Foodology star Greg Gould is giving a presentation during dinner and St. Thomas of Canterbury Church is donating the space. So you could say that "community dinner" accurately represents not only the meal, but also every step in the process. 

PLEASE JOIN US IN MAKING OUR COMMUNITY DINNER AND WORLD FOOD DAY EVENTS A HIT:

Tuesday, October 16th – restaurants serve up the GROW Method :

Here's your excuse to eat out on a Tuesday, burquenos! 13 restaurants across Albuquerque have pledged to serve World Food Day meals. The restaurants range from cafes and bakeries to wine bars and fine dining. They dish out flavors from all over the world--chicken tikka, pizza bianca, shrimp tamales, green-chile-cheese-bread, and red velvet cake. Each restaurant is already putting into effect multiple principles of GROW, whether by offering more vegetarian options, serving seasonal and local dishes, cooking smart or saving food.

Visit one of these restaurants listed below for breakfast, lunch, or dinner to show your support and learn more about what you can do to decrease hunger both here in NM and worldwide.

Artichoke Cafe

Baileys on the Beach

Desert Fish

Farina

Golden Crown Panaderia

Jennifer James 101

Nob Hill Bar and Grill

Rasoi

Richard's Mexican

Sky Garden Market

Slate Street Cafe

Thai Cuisine ii

Tiles of Old Santa Fe

Saturday, October 27th: Community dinner from local farms and coops!

For a home-cooked meal and great conversation, celebrate with us on October 27th from 6-8pm. Oxfam Action Corps is hosting a FREE Community Dinner for 100 people at St. Thomas of Canterbury Church on UNM campus. We're putting every step of the GROW Method into practice. First, we're saving food by making the meal from leftover produce from the downtown Growers Market. Second, we're cooking smart by preparing more at once. We're obviously eating seasonally and supporting local farmers. Finally, we're eating less meat, since the meal is mostly fruit and vegetables. (We're also receiving a donation from La Montañita Coop, so meat-lovers don't worry!)

What are you doing for World Food Day? Looking for a local event? Check out our Oxfam America event calendar here and sign up to host your very own World Food Day dinner in your own city!

Email actioncorps@oxfamamerica.org with any questions.

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Jasmine McBeath of Oxfam Action Corps Albuquerque writes about upcoming World Food Day events and the idea that launched an effort by dozens of restaurants and community farmers. 

Pictured: Robin Seydel 
and Terry Bowling of Monañita Coop, 
Jasmine McBeath of the Albuquerque Action Corps, and Brian Rawson of Oxfam America