Annual Meeting Recap
The Dorchester Food Co-op Mission is to challenge the traditional food system by building a community and worker-owned asset that nourishes, employs, and reinvests in the local community.
We had a lively Annual Meeting last week with more than 60 attending.
We launched the Capital Campaign, our new Co-op video,
and the newly designed website!
Did you miss it? Don't worry, below are highlights to get you caught up!
And visit the newly designed website at www.DorchesterFoodCoop.com
We opened the meeting with a grounding and land acknowledgement statement given by Board member Maridena Rojas:
"We are a group of people who love food, appreciate our farmers, advocate for our environment and its people to be treated just and well. I know we’re so excited next year we will be opening a storefront.
We want to take a moment to recognize that the Dorchester Food Co-op store will be located on the Indigenous land of the Massachusett and Pawtucket nations. We express gratitude and appreciation for the Indigenous Peoples and enslaved Africans who originally lived and worked on the land we all are on today. We honor the continued survival, contributions, and sacrifices of these ancestors, past, present, and future. As we seek to build, live, work, play and celebrate together, we understand that we have a responsibility to understand our past as we seek to understand our place on this land."
A "Time Flies" icebreaker led by Maridena and Liz Wang on Jamboard gave everyone an opportunity to share feelings about opening the store next year!
Board President Marcos Beleche presented highlights from the 2019 & 2020 Combined Annual Report, such as:
Over the past two years we gained 290 members to a total of 969 members!
January 2021, VietAID broke ground on the building site at 195 Bowdoin Street.
In 2020, we hired CoEverything, a local BIPOC architecture firm to design our store.
Food access programming continued with our CSA and the PopUP farmstands for seniors
View the full 2019 & 2020 Combined Annual Report on the website: Click Here
Architect/Designer Miriam Gee gave a store report with renderings that are on our website and presented the recently completed Co-op video that is available on our YouTube channel to watch and share with others by Clicking HERE.
DFC Board Elections
The four Board nominees, Nataka Crayton, Carlos Escarfullery, Tara Register and Amy Walsh were introduced by Board Clerk, Apolo Catala, and were elected during a two week election period, with 76 member-owners participating. Welcome new Board Members!
We now have a full, nine member Board!
(Pictured: Marcos Beleche, President; Apolo Catala, Clerk; Jenny Silverman, Treasurer Middle: Nataka Crayton, Carlos Escarfullery, Tara Register Bottom: Maridena Rojas, Robin Saunders, Amy Walsh)
Community Organizer Mea Johnson led an interactive discussion on how to get involved as a member-owner and what committee work is happening now.
(Please see GET INVOLVED section below.)
15 Door Prizes were won by the following randomly selected attendees:
Equal Exchange Tea Assortment: Olive K., Mary L., Shelby H.
DFC T-Shirts: Rhonita H., Fulani H.
Building Momentum Chocolates: Jared H., Jamison C., Mary C., Sharon P., Danielle A., Tim B., Steve D., Claire T., Emmy R., Eric F.
Honoring Resiliency
We closed the meeting with a final Jamboard group activity to celebrate what lies ahead of us and to give space to honor the resiliency of our community as we faced a difficult year on many fronts.
DIGGING DEEP FOR THE CO-OP CAPITAL CAMPAIGN!
Capital Campaign Spotlight
Brianna Boggs and Robin Saunders from the Capital Campaign Committee launched the Campaign at the Annual Meeting. We need to raise a total $1 million to build the Co-op, and announced that we are well on our way, and have already raised the first $100,000. As of today, we are now at $116,000, and are asking members to dig in to reach our May milestone of $200,000.
There are two ways to participate: (1) Invest and (2) Donate.
You are receiving a letter and brochure by mail with Capital Campaign details. Please read it and consider the way you'd be willing to participate in the funding of our Co-op. Fellow members are making phone calls to all our member-owners, to answer questions and ask for your support. Please answer our phone call --- our volunteers would really like to talk with you!
Want to learn more? Click HERE to go to the invest page on our website!
To make a pledge or ask questions, contact invest@dorchesterfoodcoop.com or 617-272-5917.
Please note: One does not need to be a DFC Member-owner to invest or donate.
However, Investment opportunities are only available to Massachusetts residents.
Tax-deductible donations of any amount are welcome from anyone, anywhere.