Country: United States

Idea: Feeding self and family well, and understanding the effects of food choice on self, neighborhood, community, nation, others, and earth, are basic tools for ethical societies. Household and community financial insecurity limit the abiltiy to obtain and use information to make healthier choices. I would like to begin, with voices normally left out of the community food policy and systems dialog, discussion and practical action for sustainable eating and food security at the neighborhood level. Strategies would include empowerment education, practical skills and values clarification, social support and advocacy training to enhance self, family and neighborhood nutritional capacity, ethical decision-making, autonomy, empathy and integration.

How do you do it: I will survey door-to-door regarding food-related health and quality of life issues, resulting in a priorities list based on people's assessment of relative importance and changeability of issues. Together, I and the participants will then design a sustainable documentation system for process, progress, and results. Next, we'll design curricula for nutrition education, cooking skills, and financial skills, as well as for learning to discuss social, political, and economics issues. Next, we'll design neighborhood support networks (child care, transportation sharing, etc) and natural helper teams. Finally, we'll design and implement a community advocacy skills program, establish a neighborhood capacity council and coordinate new local action.

Innovation: Public health interventions tend to use advocacy for groups, not advocacy with them. Involving neighborhood residents in discussion and action for food change will not only develop internal capacity, but move the neighborhood beyond the fatalism bred by instability and consistently being the target of top-down interventions. Using natural helpers (interested community residents who face the same issues) to implement and promote the new strategies and help their neighbors to use them is not an entirely new idea, but one that usually lives only within an agency's context or that of a short-lived program. This program assumes that the natural helper team holds its own records, develops its own trajectories, and builds its own accountability.

Impact: Beginning dialog and action about the nature and impact of food choice and the ability to make different choices for self, family and community will begin broad change at the local level. Ensuring that the population in need is the one in control ensures that issues addressed are the issues important to the group. Once people are supported in power and voice to acknowledge issues faced in bettering their own life chances, they can begin to act on those issues, as well as open themselves to greater concern for others. Neighborhoods with more power will be models for nearby neighborhoods and communities. Participants will support other groups seeking to make change, and these voices will be a new constituency for national dialog and change.

Ethical Action: I teach college wellness courses in which I emphasize being open to the political economy and ethical impact of food and purchasing decisions. Students who are struggling financially tell me that are making changes they didn't know were possible, and seeking ways to do even more, not just for their own and their children's health, but to be more socially responsible. Seeking people's own experiences and thoughts, in the context of their homes and neighborhoods, and offering a chance for them to learn, act, teach and lead will change perceptions and understandings, and release ethical values that tend to be ignored due to constraints of financial and community instability. Daily choices make change, and we can change our choices for good.

Replication: First, it starts small and cheap, with one willing person (me) to begin the process. Next, all documentation will be kept by a core team of participants interested in taking this accountability. This will truly make the participants the agents of the intervention, and allow them to share what they do, how they do it, and the results with people interested in trying it in other neighborhoods. Additionally, no strategies entail large expense or infrastructure. Using the documented process, anyone in any neighborhood can implement the program and change it as needed. I and interested participants will provide any needed technical support. To promote replication I'll post flyers in laundromats, schools, public pools and other community sites.

Sustainability: The capacity to make healthier, more ethical choices opens up alternatives that were unknown before, and tends to encourage people to even greater change. Thus, the knowledge-building and action itself should build its own sustainability. Because people experiencing the need are the ones fulfilling it, as long as they perceive the need and benefits they will continue to do the work of making the change for themselves and their families, which will continue changing their neighborhoods. Also, the advocacy training component would include training in grantseeking and local governmental involvement, meaning that the original concept and group action have the potential to become a brick-and-mortar organization if the community so desires.

Position in the Ethics Mosaic of Solutions:

Factor: Fatalism

Principle: Enabling self-permission to change oneself or one'