Answer: Learn how to do a better job of asking.
A food equity advocate in Charlottesville, Virginia had been armed with long cherished advice from his mom about how to avoid so-called experts knocking on their public housing apartment door. Then he found himself on the other side of the door, doing the knocking himself, and slowly appreciating that he might be part of the problem as well as part of the solution.
The project? A “Setting a Place at the Table for Harvest” campaign run by the Cultivate Charlottesville community advocates program.
It turns out to be a useful primer of misguided actions and attitudes that any agency might, notwithstanding both compassion and zeal, blunder into while on a mission to understand and to help.
Among the things they learned: “. . . the method of learning such information is just as important as the information itself.” Read more in Charlottesville Tomorrow: Food equity advocates survey often overlooked public housing communities about their unique food needs and wants
