Thank you all for attending Growing Local Coalition's first general meeting held last Thursday at the Gaia Hotel in Anderson. Our next general meeting is scheduled for Friday, June 24, 2011, so please save the date…time and place are still TBD…and now for the co-op update!
Growing Local Coalition was approached by Bridgette Brick-Wells, now the former president of the North Valley Food Co-op executive board, to assist with transferring the co-op leadership from the executive board to a new board of directors. The executive board members have each resigned. The co-op has its legal paperwork in place and about 60 members.
The core group of volunteers working with Growing Local right now feel that helping to make this transition is a straight-forward and immediate way we can give support to the effort to get a co-op opened in Redding. The co-op members and the community need the chance to explore this idea and see if they can get the momentum going again. We will also continue to explore in what ways it makes sense for the Coalition to help the co-op and in what ways the co-op could further the Coalition's mission. For example, if the members choose to make it their focus, a cooperative has the potential to foster both more local food production and more consumption of local food – primarily through creating needed flexibility for producers and facilitating programs that grow a food-literate consumer base.
Growing Local has spoken with the people at the Food Co-op Initiative about the status of the North Valley Co-op and what the next best steps are. FCI is a non-profit support group that helps communities open co-ops. Based on their recommendations, a member meeting needs to be planned next. Realistically, an official member meeting that will allow us to properly vote in a new Board will not occur until July. We are thinking that it would be good to have a meet and greet event sooner – like in early May – so co-op members and interested community members can get to know each other and start the conversation about a vision for the co-op.
So far, we have four or five people interested in helping to plan the member meeting. Two of Growing Local’s partners, Healthy Shasta and EWD, are sending four Growing Local Coalition members to a co-op training and conference offered through the California Center for Cooperative Development in the Bay Area in early April. If you would like to help plan the member meeting, please contact the Coalition at growinglocalshasta@gmail.com.
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