New Directions Collaborative is pleased to partner with the The Food and Health Forum in launching the “Food for Thought” dinner seminar series featuring Gary Hirshberg, the Chairman, President and CE-Yo of Stonyfield Farm on Monday, January 23 at 6:30 p.m. Participants will enjoy a three-course dinner and a glass of wine at the Blue Moon Evolution restaurant in Exeter, NH, an award-winning restaurant serving local and organic food. Gary will share his thoughts about the myths around the production of “cheap” food including the nutritional, environmental and social costs that consumers don’t see at the check-out line. He will present a “win-win-win-win-win formula” for sustainable food production which protects all stakeholders including shareholders, employees, farmers, consumers, even livestock.

Following Gary's talk, New Directions Collaborative will facilitate conversations among participants on why and how organic and local food supports a healthier society and what we as consumers and as a community can do to play our part. This event is sponsored by Veris Wealth Partners.

To register and/or see future events in the series: please click to Food and Health Forum

Food and Health Forum is a new venture between the owner of Blue Moon Evolution, Kathy Gallant and nutritionist and health coach, Tracey Miller, to convene doctors, policy makers, farmers, CEOs, citizens and other visionaries who are revolutionizing our food system from the ground up. They want to inspire and educate communities to help reestablish the link between what we eat, where our food comes from, and how it affects our health.

We are pleased to announce that Nancy Gabriel has joined New Directions Collaborative. Nancy is an experienced facilitator, leadership coach and designer of multi-stakeholder processes and learning environments that foster creative responses to today’s complex global challenges. Nancy’s whole systems approach encourages divergent perspectives and ways of knowing and helps individuals and groups develop the capacity to engage across difference, a key condition for the emergence of new ideas. As founder of Remembering Our Nature, Nancy works with partners to develop practices that integrate the wisdom and principles of natural systems into her work with clients.

At the Sustainability Institute, Nancy led the Donella Meadows Leadership Fellowship Program bringing together an international, diverse group of change leaders for four retreats designed to deepen their skills in systems thinking, reflective conversation, vision and engaging across difference. She co-led the Meadowlark Leadership Laboratory, a multi-stakeholder social innovation project aimed at regional and economic transformation in the Northern Great Plains. Recently, Nancy co-taught the Power, Privilege and Natural Resources course at the University of Vermont where students analyzed how privilege and power accrue in systems and can preference certain ways of knowing while marginalizing others. Click here to read more.

Interested to learn more about social network analysis? On Friday, December 2nd from 9:00am - 12:30pm, Patti Anklam will be presenting The NetWorkShop: Social and Value Network Analysis at the Boston Facilitators Roundtable. This session will share how a network lens can shed light on how human networks are structured and how technologies can enhance our ability to collaborate and co-create. For facilitators, it offers possibilities of new ways of thinking about client work as well as leadership coaching. This workshop provides a clear presentation of basic network concepts, including:

• Reflective exercises in creating and interpreting network maps of relationships (organizational and personal) using network concepts
• An introduction to value networking analysis, with a focus on mapping roles and deliverables (gives and gets) in an organizational ecosystem
• A short overview of how social media (Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn) is altering the landscape of how people create and work in networks.

In early October, 150 people from all parts of Vermont’s food system gathered for two days in Fairlee, VT to launch a network to implement the Farm to Plate Strategic Plan, a 10-year plan to build the local food system. New Directions Collaborative and Curtis Ogden of Interaction Institute for Social Change helped design and facilitate the gathering.

View local TV news coverage by Lyndon State College

Check out these videos from participants:

Allen Freund of Upper Valley Produce and VT Fresh Network:

Jean Hamilton, Northeast Organic Farming Association of VT:

Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund's web site has more videos and links.

Beth Tener of New Directions Collaborative and Curtis Ogden of Interaction Institute for Social Change were selected as the team to assist the Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund (VSJF) in creating a state-wide Farm to Plate Network to collaboratively implement and monitor progress on the recently issued Farm to Plate Strategic Plan. The Vermont Sustainable Jobs Fund, with input from 1,200 stakeholders, developed this comprehensive 10-year strategic plan to strengthen Vermont’s food system. The Farm to Plate Strategic Plan contains 33 goals and 60 high priority strategies that will lead to job creation, greater economic output, and increased access for Vermont and regional consumers to healthy, fresh food over the next 10 years. We will advise on the network governance structure and provide two network trainings to enable the momentum of the F2P Strategic Plan’s development to be carried forward into collaborative action among a diverse range of entities to achieve the goals.