Resilient Future for Food Players

We are a global Food Shaper Collective, born during COVID-19, made up of rich talent and radical diversity from five continents (see video). We are passionate and optimistic about a future where food players respond resiliently to shocks/strains and, simultaneously, sustainably feed and elevate humanity.

Note: We began this application with the intention to apply as a Collective, as we understood the project to be spotlighting "heroes." We felt our project's response to one of the world's most critical challenges at this time: resiliently and sustainably feeding humanity-by guiding small food players on how to restart, fit extremely well with the Elevate vision. We learned in the July video of the “individual" focus. However, we stayed our course as our project's unique power rests in our Collective. If selected, we will have, Alana Libow, represent us and engage our team with learnings to enhance our ambition to elevate humanity. 

1. We are committed to helping small sized food players - changemakers who feed their communities - from producers to service providers resiliently restart and build a better future across the world (beginning in 5 distinct geographic regions - N.A., S.A., Europe, Asia, & Africa). 

2. We are proposing to run open access & local trainings for food players, who are traditionally “left behind.” Through our open access trainings and local engagements, we believe we can reach and support food players of the world’s markets and not only enable them to go forward, but also help their economies restart, their communities nourish, and their livelihoods resiliently and sustainably advance. We will begin with a pilot in Miami, FL, N.A.

3. Our project will elevate humanity because it is responding to the most critical needs across global communities (following and in tandem to the immediate medical/public health crisis) - food security and livelihood regeneration.

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely affected global food businesses as flows have stopped, and people's behaviors have changed. This is an essential time for food businesses to build resiliency to survive and respond to immediate needs during the pandemic, and thrive as we collectively build a better tomorrow.

The challenge of redefining the food system began before the COVID crisis, and has since been exacerbated globally. 

Food is the one of the most vital resources for life on Earth. Among a myriad of challenges, the global food system is facing these high-level problems:

• A global population approaching 10 billion, greenhouse gasses changing our climate, pollution poisoning our soil, air, and water. 

• Our current consumption patterns are pushing planetary limits

• Soil degradation could be a big problem in nearest time without taking mesure on this problem.

 Effects of these challenges, coupled with the COVID pandemic, have caused food businesses and players to pause and close.  During the COVID crises we saw how vulnerable small food businesses are. We would like our project to help them review business and operational models in order to build a more resilient food business and better future for food systems and the planet.

We created a hands-on guide for food businesses to shape a better future by adopting resiliency. We take the user through a reflective and practical journey where they learn about the world’s new context and relate it with their vision and purpose to generate creative ideas and discover new business opportunities. We provide food shapers with tools that help them build partnerships, and sustainable and resilient opportunities in response to the external world (society, consumers, &  the food system) and their internal world (company, employees and values). 

Over the coming months and years as the world and our food system continue to be in crisis and transformation, we aim to engage global food players/shapers in e-trainings, local engagements (where safe), and creative medium (radio/What'sApp) to support regions and people without internet. The Elevate Prize funding will enable us to market and deliver our product across a range of medium and challenged regions. Together we will resiliently restart food businesses and elevate those traditionally left behind who cannot afford to pay for guidance. 

We will begin with a pilot taking place virtually and targeted at Miami food shapers during August 2020. 

(Please see here and attached for our Guide 2.0)

Our project is mainly for small (and medium) food players (food producers, manufactures, processors, chefs, cafes and restaurants owners, retailers) who are struggling during the COVID-19 crisis. We are targeting those who are working to adapt/solve a challenge and/or looking for new opportunities to restart. We aim for their mentality to be one that is open to turning crisis into an opportunity for transformative change -- to collectively build a more resilient and sustainable food business.

During the first 4 months of COVID, we launched our project and interviewed different food players across 5 continents (Africa, Asia, Europe, South America, & North America). We learned about what problems they are facing, what resources they need, and in what medium they could best access guidance materials and learnings. We also heard stories and share guidance from food shapers who have been resilient in the wake of COVID-19. We understand that our users will be most inspired by their counterparts. And, we interviewed global consumers to learn about what they are feeling during these uncertain times. The collective feedback combined with global market research helped us design a clear and meaningful resource for food players/shapers like them.

While our project appears to primarily connect to the Elevate Prize’s first dimension (elevating small food players who are traditionally left behind-details in various answers), our project also uniquely supports the third dimension.

With in-depth market research and our diverse cultural and professional backgrounds, we engage our user-food players in our self-developed methodology and journey that teaches them about the continued transformation of today's consumers from immediate physiological needs to their highest levels of self-fulfillment aspirations. Thus, we also elevate the understanding of global food players by changing their attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors towards consumers at this transformational time.

The world’s pandemic landed upon the lives of seven radically diverse individuals across Africa, Asia, Europe, N.A., and S.A (who didn’t know each other, but each of whom had served as selected Guides just weeks earlier for the Rockefeller Food System Vision Prize). 

As doors and borders began to close and connectivity became limited, we each chose to join an online check-in. From backyards in Botswana to desks in Colombia, we shared openly about how our lives were changing and what we were feeling. While we were each being affected in different ways at home and in our own businesses, we found resilience within and were collectively inspired to share our knowledge and skills to help smaller food businesses, traditionally left behind. Food systems all over the world have their weaknesses, so we wondered how could we utilize this moment to become stronger and more resilient and elevate humanity? Answering that question has taken us on the unexpected journey of this project (as shared in the closing line of our video). We united around a shared vision to help food businesses move from an abrupt state of inaction towards a more resilient and sustainable state of productivity. 

We are a global team of "shapers" from distinct parts of the world, who have each been committed to advancing our world's food system (click for bios) throughout our careers. We see that despite our differences, we are stronger uniting around a shared principle for a future that helps individuals become more aware and resilient and societies more sensible.

We are passionate about this project because we believe that it could help empower small and medium sized food businesses who are usually underserved, from producers and processors to retailers and caterers. We aim for each to become more resilient and thrive throughout the COVID-19 crisis and in upcoming challenges of today's uncharted world. Like us, we aim to motivate different food players to work together around health, local economy, buying practices and operating strategies to ensure a more sustainable future for all. 

Our close work with food businesses and powerful visionaries pre and during COVID motivated us to go further and create a tool that could positively impact food players' systems and the system at large. Hands-on we provide shapers opportunities to develop initiatives and elevate society through a healthy, sustainable, collaborative and prosperous food future.

Our team contains professionals from five diverse cultural backgrounds and an eclectic set of experiences including: business and startups, human oriented designers, sustainability and circular economy consultants, executive coach, financial and marketing professionals (Linked-In bios below). Our distinct culture-know-how and personal and professional characteristics enable us to create a product that could be useful for people from different countries and backgrounds and prepare us to be culturally-sensitive trainers to global food shapers. 

We also have two team members (Alana Libow and Juliana Gonzalez) who will pilot this opportunity in the coming weeks: 

Alana, our food systems sustainable development expert and transformative change coach will lead a pro-bono five part e-training series for small-medium food businesses in Miami featuring the segments of our Guide:

1. The New Landscape - Context, Trends, & Insights  (July 30th, 2020)

2. Your Purpose + Your Customer  (August 6th, 2020)

3. Discover New Opportunities, Repurpose Capabilities (August 13th, 2020)

4. Partnering - Across sectors and within Miami’s Ecosystem (August 20th, 2020)

5. Operating in Our New World: Build a Resilient & Sustainable Business (August 27th, 2020)

Juliana, our food experience design consultant, will be testing out our materials with Colombian individual food shapers.

Please meet our full team here, in the prior bios, and in our video.

https://www.linkedin.com/in/alanalibow/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/juliana-gonz%C3%A1lez-218b756a/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/lhdemery/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/minhthunguyen/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/ekaterina-egorova-8368bb33/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/rethabilekonopo/

https://www.linkedin.com/in/kehindefash/ 

Our project was birthed in setback - the world’s pandemic and our own compromised moments from family to business. While our collective strains united us and a better future for the world's food system and humanity inspired us to launch our idea, we were also unaware of how each of us preferred to communicate, work, and collaborate - critical elements to being a successful remote team, who had never met or worked together. Weeks into ideation and content contributions, we felt the team’s energy fray and commitment wane. “Lost in translation” moments caused frustrations and developing exercises that were manageable for small businesses of the world’s cultures became harder than anticipated. 

We reached out to a community expert and collectively developed ways to integrate diverse individual and cultural ways of learning and working to regenerate our team enthusiasm. Over the weeks, it's been very inspiring to see great energy come from those who felt frustrated, ideas shoot out from those who had initially shared less, and exercises become more tangible for different cultures. Learning about our team not only has helped us become stronger but also become more prepared when working with food players of all cultures and personality types.

During the initial weeks of the pandemic, while food players from around the world began to pivot in response to the shocks, we came together and began to form our vision for our Resilient Future for Food Players’ Guide. IDEO launched a COVID-19 Business Pivot Challenge. We submitted our version 1.0 (see Food System_ Reinvention Toolkit.pdf and Copy of [INTERNAL] COVID Toolkit prototype .pdf or at the bottom of this link).  The majority of the applications were from businesses around the world that had pivoted. We had submitted our resource tool on how small businesses, traditionally left  behind, could reinvent.. We were thrilled to learn that IDEO selected us as one of three finalists to be showcased. IDEO highlighted that we were selected because of the extraordinary way in which we came together in the face of adversity -- without any official request or financial backing; how we leveraged our radical diversity as an advantage, and how we are uniting our food expertise across our shared vision to help food players create a resilient and sustainable future. We felt very proud to stand as a role model for each of our communities and for the global food community.

We are a Collective. We are made up of 7 individuals from five continents. We each have our own original and separate professional paths (either organizations of which we are a part or our own consultancies). We believe today's world needs a Collective and nimble approach. We are committed to expanding from our own linear worlds to an expansive Collective/Collabortive Network approach. We are working on our Collective's business model (please see that section). We may explore whether a Collective can be established as a B-Corp.

Our diverse team and our ability to resiliently unite and respond with changemaking disruptive vision and unending commitment in a time of global crisis sets us apart. Working for four months, across five continents, with seven diverse beings, who have never met, and no financial support, further demonstrates a new dimension of performance and an example what is possible for remote collaboration. We showcase the ability to transform challenge as a chance for change. Our work product is not only a set of tools to help food players build a more resilient tomorrow, it is also a creative and unique methodology that represents our collective backgrounds and minds ready to engage and collaboratively inspire a new tomorrow for our food system. Our edge also lies in the fact that we target the smallest players -- the backbones and quiet heroes of our developing and emerging markets, often left behind.

Our Theory of Change is based upon three premises:

1. Food Players are acting as a part in a larger food system.

2. Through a process of 6 phases - understanding trends, redefining purpose, discovering opportunities, developing partnerships, and building sustainable resilience - food players will take on various mindsets to overcome challenges.

3. By building resiliency and sustainability, global food players will be able to adapt and overcome stressful shocks and circumstances, such as the COVID-19 pandemic.

We hope to have a global reach to train small businesses through 6 phases and engaging exercises. With these exercises, tools, and tips, global food players will develop mindsets and skills to innovate and adapt through challenges. The overall outcome is to have food players be able to adapt, build resiliency and sustainability so they can take actions today that will create a better food system for tomorrow.

Our pilot in Miami, FL U.S.A. and Colombia will initially reach approximately 20-30 businesses.

In one year we aim to be serving at least that number in each of our respective countries and hopefully more via our proposed online open access e-course.

In five years we aim for our Collective to be serving hundreds through our global reach of this Guide and the other streams of our work noted in the business model.

Our goals within the next year are to roll out an open access e-training for food players traditionally left behind. We will start testing our process within the Americas. We will run an initial e-training in August for food players in Miami, FL USA other engagements with individual food players in Colombia, South America. We will then further refine the toolkit. We aim to find funding and partners for these initial engagements and others we would like to then launch in Asia, Africa, and Europe.

We aim to build a community with food players around the world and engage small food businesses to make partnerships and help them advance themselves to build a better future of food.

Our goal within the next five years is to make players in a food supply chain more resilient, transparent and sustainable, give small businesses the space to play a big role in a food system. Establish a clear and easy way for food businesses to change to more resilient and sustainable processes, and find partnerships in a ecosystem of resilient food players. 

• We need to secure resources and build ways to collaborate via e- and in-person platforms (where needed and where safe) to reach small food players who are traditionally left behind, cannot afford to pay, and yet are crucial economic forces, eg emerging markets/developing nations.

• Resources to support our teams’ initial trainings, coachings, and consulting

• Financial resources for marketing activities in order to deliver our message to food players in different countries

• Funding to establish in-country teams and organizational costs in countries where we would like to operate. This will allow us to develop closer on-the-ground opportunities with local food players.

• Cultural: Small and medium sized food players, especially small ones, are highly culturally sensitive, therefore we need to spend time getting to know them and their eco-systems. This will allow us to build deep empathy and collaboratively enable their elevation.

• We are always  and continuing to consider language and access issues. We aim to explore the most diverse ways for our tool to reach those who may not have access to internet -  eg via Radio or WhatsApp.

• One of our team members is a legally trained professional, so we will continue to look to her for guidance as we go to market and are taking into account the legal systems of each of our regions of operating.

Please see our "path to financial sustainability" section for further information on how to overcome these barriers and our investment strategy ideas.

• Funding: We will try to find partnerships and collaborations like this one

• Reaching Food Players: We are developing communication to outreach and build partnerships with organizations and platforms with food players in order to promote our work and find ways to deliver our value to small food players.

Our team came together via an independent consultant to IDEO, the design consultancy, who has partnered with The Rockefeller Foundation and Second Muse on The Food System Vision Prize 2050. Through her and our team’s own professional links we have established a solid working relationship with IDEO, Open IDEO, and IDEO’s Food Team. As noted above in “Leadership,” we submitted to Open IDEO’s COVID Business Pivot Challenge and were selected amongst 2 other global business pivots to feature version 1.0 of our Guide. 

Our Guide will be used by IDEO’s Food team as inspiration for a Guide they are developing for their clients and community. We are not being paid for this.

Our Guide will also be shared with The Rockefeller Foundation’s Food System Vision Prize team and visionaries. The Rockefeller team is now building “Guides” for its visionaries and ours will be included. However, we are not receiving any funding from Rockefeller.

Our Collective’s product offerings could include:

• Online and offline courses for food businesses with different price tariffs (to help offset those who are left behind and cannot pay). These courses could be offered to food players of all sizes who are stuck and need to find a way forward, who need to find new opportunities in the food area, and businesses who are looking to be more resilient and sustainable but they don’t know where to start.

• Consultancy services to larger food players/those who can pay. We would target food businesses who want personal assistance and coaches with diverse backgrounds in order to work closely with the business and run the process of transformation together with our team.

• Consultancy services for educational and training organizations that aim to create toolkits and courses. This could be of interest to organizations that are looking for external international experts to help them to create and develop food toolkits and methodologies, given the world is facing a mounting food security crisis.

• Food system expertise and strategic guidance for global organizations developing food security systems change approaches.

We are exploring getting funding from foundations and organizations to start the project as well as how to get paid for consulting and training. The key is that food businesses traditionally left behind cannot pay. We will explore whether larger food entities could perhaps pay for us as consultants and trainers and we could apply some of what is earned to establishing our open access e-portal/trainings.

We are also exploring how those in the impact investing space could build a Food Resiliency Fund. I, Alana Libow, have a background in impact investing and am beginning conversations with a colleague who has experience building impact funds. Miami has recently established a Resiliency Fund for one of its arts organizations with an initial investment by Judith Rodin, former head of The Rockefeller Foundation. We would like to explore whether Joseph Deitch and/or the funds from Elevate Prize could contribute to establishing the initial Food System Resiliency Fund.

As noted above: We are exploring getting funding from foundations and organizations to start the project as well as how to get paid for consulting and training. The key is that food businesses traditionally left behind cannot pay. We will explore whether larger food entities could perhaps pay for us as consultants and trainers and we could apply some of what is earned to establishing our open access e-portal/trainings.

We are also exploring how those in the impact investing space could build a Food Resiliency Fund. I, Alana Libow, have a background in impact investing and am beginning conversations with a colleague who has experience building impact funds. Miami has recently established a Resiliency Fund for one of its arts organizations with an initial investment by Judith Rodin, former head of The Rockefeller Foundation. We would like to explore whether Joseph Deitch and/or the funds from Elevate Prize could contribute to establishing the initial Food System Resiliency Fund.

We estimate that our expenses for 2020 would be 150K USD.

Salary (team members, design, social media content creation): 100 000 USD

Marketing and PR, web site, and technical assistance: 25 000 USD

Trainings (electronic and in-person when feasible and safe) and Engagements: 25,000 USD

Total 150 000 USD

We are applying to the Elevate Prize because we find its mission to elevate humanity to be an ideal match for our project --especially as a spotlight is being shone on the strains and changes to food players and the food system.

The Elevate Prize will enable us to initially reach small food players across the world who would otherwise be left behind. Some of whom we will reach via our open online access training and others whom we will reach on the ground via local organizations.  Working in partnership with the Elevate network and establishing our marketing strategy/outreach, we are confident we will be able to establish effective networks to enable the reach and impact upon humanity of our vision.

Please see prior answers.

Note: In previous questions we have noted how we plan to partner with IDEO and The Rockefeller Foundation.

Below we include a list of additional partners with whom we aim to partner to help get our product to the greatest number of small businesses in need of going forward and building a resilient future.

FAO

EllenMacArthur Foundation

Chef Manifesto

Barilla Center for Food & Nutrition

EAT Foundation

FoodFutureCo.

Larger food organizations eg: Danone, Unilever, etc

Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Dangote

Dufil Prima

Forum for the future

Second Muse

FOLU (Food and Land Use Coalition)

Seeds&Chips

Governments as needed

Rockefeller

IDEO / OpenIDEO