Visions of Food Justice, College of the Atlantic, Center for Human Ecology Room 102, 105 Eden Street, Bar Harbor, Maine
Across the nation people are working to transform food systems. Carceral food systems are no exception.
The Downeast Restorative Harvest project is breaking ground on a community garden in Washington County, Maine, to engage jail and prison residents, members of the recovery community, agriculture educators, and other community members in growing food for the jail’s kitchen and for donation to local food assistance programs. Maine State Prison has developed a robust horticultural training program to provide healthy food and meaningful vocational training for residents. Nationally, groups like Impact Justice are working to expand access to nourishing food in prisons and jails as a fundamental human right.
In this panel, Dr. Kourtney Collum will lead a discussion with Regina Grabrovac, Leslie Soble, and Rebekah Mende about their work and expertise on these and other projects to realize food justice and build community food security in Maine and beyond.
Dr. Kourtney Collum is the Partridge Chair in Food and Sustainable Agriculture Systems and Associate Dean of Faculty at College of the Atlantic (COA). Kourtney teaches a range of courses that examine ways of transforming food systems to achieve better health, equity, justice, and sovereignty for the humans and other-than-human beings entangled in those systems. Kourtney holds a Ph.D. in Anthropology & Environmental Policy and an M.S. in Forest Resources from the University of Maine, Orono. She has conducted research with farmers, beekeepers, and maple syrup producers across Maine and Maritime Canada to better understand human-environment interactions within agriculture, particularly the ways in which social and political conditions influence on-farm practices. Kourtney serves on the board of the Bar Harbor Food Pantry, is a member of the MDI Food Access Project and the Hancock County Food Security Network, and serves on the advisory council for the Downeast Restorative Harvest Project. Kourtney’s most recent work focuses on addressing the growing rate of hunger among college students across the United States, including at COA.
Regina Grabrovac (she/her) is a previous farmer and lifelong homesteader. For the last twelve years, in her role as Food Programs Manager at Healthy Acadia, Regina has managed various food programs across Washington County that help increase food security and access to healthy foods, including the Downeast Gleaning Initiative, Washington County Food Pantry Network, and several community gardens. Regina has decades of commercial and small scale organic farming experience and is an organic certification inspector for several state and international agencies. Currently, Regina is leading the on-the-ground efforts to develop the Downeast Restorative Harvest program, a large community garden based in Machias in partnership with the Washington County Jail and the Maine Department of Corrections. This program will provide opportunities for jail residents to participate in gardening and educational programming to support residents' ability to gain employment in their communities upon release, as well as to benefit their physical and mental health. Regina is an alumni of College of the Atlantic, and holds a BA in Agricultural Economics from Marlboro College.
Rebekah Mende is the Vocational Trades Instructor in Sustainability with Maine State Prison. The maximum-security correctional facility is well known for its robust horticultural program, which engages residents in the growing of food for the prison’s dining services and local food pantries. The prison has also partnered with UMaine Cooperative Extension to offer a horticultural training program for prison residents looking to develop skills in the horticulture industry. In addition to providing meaningful job-readiness training for residents, the garden and compost programs have led to significant cost savings for the facility. Rebekah holds an MS in Food Systems and Society from Marylhurst University and received a Bachelor of Science in Community Development from Portland State University. She has focused her work in prison food reform for over 10 years with combined experience in both private sector prison advocacy as well as present day security informed experience.
Leslie Soble (she/her) manages the Food in Prison Project and is the lead author of Impact Justice’s national report, Eating Behind Bars: Ending the Hidden Punishment of Food in Prison. An ethnographer and folklorist, Leslie has spent nearly five years immersed in research on the carceral eating experience and its impacts on individuals, communities, and the environment. In her current role, she oversees Impact Justice’s initiatives at the intersection of food and incarceration. Leslie holds an MA in cultural sustainability from Goucher College, with a focus on the intersection of foodways, narrative theory, and social practice art, and received her BA in gender studies from Brown University, where her course of study focused on grassroots movements for social change.
*** This event is open to the public. Pre-registration requested. To register, click here and scroll to the bottom of the page. For more information, please email kcollum@coa.edu. ***