advancing health equity by building a just
and resilient food system

At DC Greens, we’re committed to focusing on transformational changes at the systems level. We do this by building bridges between government, private sector, communities and nonprofits, developing advocacy channels to amplify community voices, curating best practices and leveraging existing infrastructure, responding to community needs, and providing thought leadership.

Collaboration | Creativity | Equity | Integrity | Sustainability

History & Context

Our food system is built on legacies of structural racism that are rooted in slavery and native genocide. The current food system actively undermines individual and community health of BIPOC and people experiencing poverty, particularly Black communities living east of the Anacostia River. Racial discrimination – including red-lining, mass incarceration, labor exploitation, and the displacement of Black communities – has created conditions of poverty, disinvestment, and disenfranchisement that must be uprooted to advance food justice and health equity.

DC Greens has a history of creating programs with an eye toward systemic uptake. Read more about programs we’ve innovated and incubated here.

What is Food Justice?

To advance food justice is to recognize and address the structural inequalities in our food system. The work of creating a just food system shifts power and knowledge to community members so that they can exercise their right to grow, sell and eat healthy food at all times.

Theory of Change

DC Greens believes that achieving health equity requires resilient, just, and equitable food systems. 

DC Greens advances health equity by creating cross-sector collaborations and advancing equitable, city-wide policy solutions to build a just and resilient food system. We do this work in solidarity with marginalized communities experiencing poverty and food insecurity.

We believe that building resilient, just, and equitable food systems requires: 

• Advancing equitable food policy that shifts the scale, scope, and nature of government investment and responsibility 

  • Making existing power structures accessible to people currently outside those structures

  • Transforming institutions towards equitable practices 

• Cross-sector collaboration

  • Implementing programs that provide evidence to support policy change

  • Coordinating resources, people, spaces, and coalitions 

• Solidarity with directly-impacted communities

  • Supporting the leadership of marginalized residents to advance community-led solutions while creating structures and mechanisms for accountability

Transferring resources by catalyzing and supporting new funding relationships for BIPOC-led organizations.