FRESH sponsors 2020 Alaska Food Festival & Conference
How do we even conference anymore? Some of us plan our entire year, vacations, and work schedules around food conferences. They’re a time to network, present, reflect, and forge new paths ahead in our work. In 2020 the templated rules, materials, budgets, and expectations went right out the window. How did we do it? Take a volunteer board, a handful of very dedicated staff, some dedicated sponsors, and a couple hundred enthusiastic food systems advocates, put them in a Zoom room et voilà - the 5th Alaska Food Festival and Conference came to fruition.*
With FRESH’s many other planned events cancelled due to COVID-19 gathering restrictions, we were admittedly left scratching our heads about ways to serve our community and share the works, successes, and learnings of our Alaska food system. The opportunity to sponsor the 2020 Alaska Food Festival and Conference was exactly what we needed - an opportunity to amplify another group’s work and support food systems literacy across the state!
The conference goals were 3-fold:
(1) increase awareness of Alaska food issues among the general population;
(2) provide training, resources, and networking opportunities to increase involvement in local food issues by community members and decision makers; and
3) increase connections and build community between the public, Alaska food businesses, NGOs, governmental entities, Tribal entities, and others to support local economic development and innovative solutions.
Among the many sessions that ran over the course of 2-days, highlights included this list of motivating keynotes as well as a pre-conference screening of the film Gather, “an intimate portrait of the growing movement amongst Native Americans to reclaim their spiritual, political and cultural identities through food sovereignty, while battling the trauma of centuries of genocide.” followed by a discussion led by the film’s director Sanjay Rawal.
FRESH’s sponsorship contributions included monetary support, creation of technical assistance documents for presenters and attendees, tech training sessions for presenters, room moderator services, and MOST exciting - scholarships for attendance and the first cohort training of Local Food Leaders in 2021! In total 20 people were awarded FRESH scholarships for the conference and will be able to offer at least 10 Local Food Leader training scholarships. This was a win all around!
FRESH is a collaborative project between Alaska Pacific University, University of Alaska Anchorage, and University of Alaska Fairbanks. We are grateful to APU for facilitating FRESH sponsorship and sharing the event news and the Alaska Food Policy Council for this collaborative opportunity. Can’t wait to see what comes of all the connections made this year!**
*This sponsorship was made possible by the 2019-20 Walter J. Hickel professorship of Strategic Leadership & Entrepreneurship, a position that Alaska Pacific University’s FRESH Director Rachael Miller held from 2017 - 2020.
**APU FRESH Director Rachael Miller served as co-chair of the Alaska Food Policy Council during this conference.