This month we will discuss how levering the power of the food sector by integrating capital investments in area food businesses, is a path to grow community health and economic resilience. We will also learn about a burgeoning collective in Camden, New Jersey which is integrating local resources to not support local food businesses, but catalyze broader community and regional resilience. Learn from this program the positive impact that investments in healthy food networks can have within these underserved communities and beyond.
To lead this discussion, we are pleased to welcome Mark Watson, Senior Investment Strategist of the Fair Food Network. The Fair Food Network, a national nonprofit, on a mission to grow community health and wealth through food. In 2013, it launched an impact investing arm, Fair Food Fund, which is using a place-based model to integrate all forms of capital in communities so food entrepreneurs can be engines of a more equitable future. Watson will be joined by James Johnson-Piett, the Principal and CEO of Urbane Development. Urbane Development is a community development venture and certified M/WBE based in New York City and Philadelphia. Fair Food Network and Urbane Development have partnered in the past in healthy food access work. Following a presentation by Mark and James will engage in a wide-ranging discussion and open up for questions and answers from attendees.