• We are building staff skills for inclusive meetings, communication, and collaboration.
• We have prioritized learning opportunities that deepen our understanding of (1) the unearned privileges that disproportionately benefit some groups at the expense of others, and (2) systems of oppression that disproportionately disadvantage people from marginalized groups.
• We expanded our leadership team to include non-executive staff, with the goals of including more diverse viewpoints and establishing participatory decision-making practices.
• We founded a Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Team to resource our organization for an ever-deepening commitment to equity.
• We restructured some internal functions (HR, IT, and Administration, for example) to better serve equitable outcomes.
• We are learning to attribute our logo, the bird and the corn kernel, to its Indigenous meanings and origins.
• We are learning to apply an equity lens to all aspects of our work including employee compensation, hiring, marketing, program design, and service delivery (just to name a few).

If you’d like to connect with us about our journey, past and future, you can contact us at  info@vtfoodbank.org.

Guiding our work are shared commitments; provided below are some of those commitments that inform how we live into our mission and strategic direction, including our goals, strategies, and accountability.

Equity Statement

At Vermont Foodbank, we work to center equity in all we do. We recognize that hunger is rooted in intersecting systems of oppression, such as racism, classism, and ableism. These systems disproportionately impact Black, Indigenous, People of Color, and other marginalized communities in Vermont. We commit to continuing to center equity internally and in our work in the community by:

• listening to and supporting solutions from people with lived and living experience of hunger and poverty
• working to dismantle barriers to ensure everyone has access to nourishing, culturally relevant food
• designing distribution models that promote the physical and emotional safety and comfort of neighbors
• continuously evolving our internal culture, systems, and structures to advance diversity, inclusion, well-being, shared leadership, and the practice of racial and social equity

We approach this work with humility, accountable to our communities and are committed to continuous learning and meaningful action.

There are so many resources available. Here are a few that were part of our learning journey:

• Dismantling Racism in the Food System from Food First
• white supremacy culture by Tema Okun
• 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge from Food Solutions New England