This Q&A is part of a series highlighting the work of the 2020 Funds to Feed Grantees, community organizations who provided critical food during the COVID-19 pandemic. Answers have been edited for clarity and length.
Cihuapactli Collective's Maria Del Carmen Parra Cano and Enjolie Lafaurie sat down with LISC to talk about the impact of their Funds to Feed project.
What was your organization doing before the pandemic? What new opportunities opened up due to your Funds to Feed project?
Maria del Carmen Parra Cano: Prior to the pandemic, the collective functioned more in community-based settings. We provided a lot of health and wellness educational workshops in person. Our staple event is our Ancestral Womb Wellness Gathering with hundreds of birth workers, traditional healers, elders. We feature different things about health and wellness, always including food as medicine in the conversation and healing ways.
Then the pandemic came and the impact of businesses closing and people hoarding, and it was like, well, how can we shift that model to support other people in need right now. Access to food, as you know, was the greatest impact, and so we with our indigenous food pantry through Sana Sana we were able to offer indigenous care packs at a minimal rate. Prior to Funds to Feed, we had given out $15,000 worth of dry goods.
Funds to Feed let us have a greater impact by serving more people and having all those funds go out to the community.
How did you use the Funds to Feed Grant? What new partnerships formed because of the project? Where did you source your food?
Enjolie Lafaurie: The most tangible product was our indigenous essential goods care packs. But with the grant, we were also able to build our capacity. We secured a location, and we got all the things that you need to operate a space. We were able to be more established. And when we use the word established, I don't mean it like established in the community but physically established, although I do think getting more established in the community was also a positive repercussion of the funds -- some of the partnerships that were formed, getting more connected with LISC Phoenix, getting more connected with InSite Consultants. We were aware before, but now I think we look to one another for solutions, for problem solving, for friendship.
Carmen: As far as sourcing goes, we sourced from different indigenous farmers, growers, producers, manufacturers. We've sourced from Pinole Blue out of Wichita, KS, but they source directly from the community in northern Mexico. We also sourced with Quetzal Co-op out of Tonatierra in downtown Phoenix to purchase coffee. We also sourced multiple items from Ramona Farms. Through relationships that we already had through the Sana Sana indigenous food pantry, I was able to engage them more and say, “Are you ready? This is what we have coming.” We sourced with them directly at wholesale.
Can you share the positive aspects of incorporating cultural practices and histories in your project and how the cultural focus helped reach new communities?
Carmen: All our work is pretty much culture based, using cultural knowledge, traditional knowledge sharing. It’s all aimed at healing. Having people know where to source items, where they can find the things they identify and connect with. People remember, their genetic memory, the real connection. Say, for example, Ramona Farms and tepary beans. You could find them in other stores, but they're not accessible in the communities that we serve. They're at Whole Foods but they're not at the limited stores in South Phoenix. Knowing the nutritional content of these foods was the other impact. Because not only were they culturally relevant to the most underserved populations in the city, but the nutritional content of our packs, I’d say, is probably one of the most impactful things.
Enjolie: So was being able to really see and experience what it looks like to provide aid, but with dignity; to provide aid in a way that is enriching, restorative. That connects people back to their culture. I feel strongly that the pandemic revealed three things in so far as who can thrive. It was those who were able to engage social connections, practical skills and technology. It got people thinking about growing their own food. And then it was how do I combine practical skills with social connections? For a lot of people, at least people in our community, that went back to culture. Like, hold on. I have stories about this. My grandmother taught me this. Or I remember this? How do I resuscitate or revitalize that knowledge source?
Did the Funds to Feed Grant and your project support new community leaders?
Enjolie: For our organization, I think technology was a missing piece that we were not accessing. Through our elders, we know about native science. We know that technology has always been a big part of all cultures, but I think when you reference it in a historical way as opposed to knowing how to bring it into the present, this is another layer. How do we access this thing called technology to share information and to still connect? That allowed certain of our members who are maybe farther away from us to also access the collective.
Why is this work important to your community? In other words, how will this impact future generations?
Enjolie: We know that pandemics and these major situations occur, probably every 100 years. We’re able to take advantage of the fact that we're at this age range where we can do something about it, and shape the risk. I look at my daughter. I'm like, ‘Oh, wow, this is going to shape you. This is what I'm telling you what you need to prepare yourself for the world.’ I see that being true for other children and other young people and adults who are re-imagining their land, the landscape of their professional world and how they relate to their family and land and space as well.
Carmen: For me, it was also helping share our efforts with my children and physically making packs and letting them know what we're doing. It always reminds me of like when we first started Sana Sana, my then two-year-old would ask me, ‘Mama, are you gonna go feed the people? OK, you go feed the people.’ She loved it. She understood. Our children, hopefully, are learning food support as collaboration and being able to share.
The Funds to Feed Grant was about seeding a future, not just responding to the urgencies of COVID-19. What do you feel the lasting impact of your project will be?
Carmen: It helped support only our infrastructure and our physical place, but we’ve realized that we've outgrown this space already. Our dreams down the road are to have a community wellness center, food being part of that. Having a teaching kitchen, having a storefront. We do a lot supporting birth workers, building their capacity into being entrepreneurs, what we call “mommypreneurship.” So, that's part of that social-economic wing that we like to help build. Food is always going to be part of our lives, and so we envision the space -- hopefully on the south side -- with land to grow our food to then produce it, whether it be through sales of fresh goods or having other dry goods available from community partners. So much potential. We're urging other people within the collective: What do you want to do? How do you want to grow as an individual? And how can we support you as a collective?
What is one thing you learned from this past year?
Carmen: I think I learned my capacity, my physical capacity. I've partnered with three different orgs that were funded and so that was insane. But it worked out beautifully. Each understood and I let them know from the get-go. This is primarily the application you know with the collective, but then also saying this is my time. This is my capacity. Are you OK with that?
Enjolie: And I'll just say right now I learned about Carmen’s endurance. I feel like I'm a strong person. I'm an athlete. I don't know what is in Carmen’s DNA. I learned I can't be her. I need to be myself, and that's been exceptionally valuable. We always talk about in our organization that we respond to a woman’s call, a mother’s call. That's just the work that we do. This was another layer of that. I'll say, we prayed about this. We did. We prayed for growth. We just didn't know what it was going to look like.