The Harry Chapin Self-Reliance Awards
A Partnership of WHY and the Harry Chapin Foundation

With the generous support of the Harry Chapin Foundation, the Harry Chapin Self-Reliance Awards program distributes cash grants ($7,000 maximum award) to outstanding grassroots organizations in the United States that have moved beyond charity to creating change in their communities. Organizations selected as Harry Chapin Self-Reliance Award winners are judged outstanding for their innovative and creative approaches to fighting domestic hunger and poverty by empowering people and building self-reliance.

The 2008 winners are:

Rochester Roots develops self-reliance by providing the education and tools that help low-income people obtain nutritious, locally grown food, and through the development and marketing of urban produce and products. They strive to achieve this vision through their participation in the local food system and through education and advocacy. Sharing the Harvest is a program in which produce is distributed to participating low-income youth and neighboring residents so they feed their families, or for educational purposes in the classroom. Through their South Wedge Farmers Market, Rochester Roots engages in entrepreneurial activities with vendors, youth and seniors. Rochester Roots also teaches the community to cook produce into nutritious meals in their Community kitchen Cooking Class program and offer teenagers the opportunity to intern with local chefs. Rochester Roots will use the award to provide area youth with a summer training program educating them in workforce development, and sustainable urban agriculture

The Texas Tenants' Union (TTU) is a nonprofit tenants' rights organization. They empower tenants through education and organizing to protect their rights, preserve their homes, improve their living conditions and enhance the quality of life in their communities. TTU educates tenants about their rights through weekly workshops, phone assistance, and written materials. They also work to preserve and improve multifamily housing with active, informed input from the residents of the property. Lastly TTU successfully builds the capacity of tenant groups through leadership development workshops. TTU has been instrumental in helping tenants influence decisions to preserve and improve their housing. Low income tenants are often afraid to speak out and underestimate the impact they can have through organizing; TTU gives them the tools to do so. TTU will use their award to continue organizing and educating area tenants.

Growing Power is a national nonprofit organization and land trust supporting people from diverse backgrounds, and the environments in which they live, by helping to provide equal access to healthy, high-quality, safe and affordable food for people in all communities. Growing Power implements this mission by providing hands-on training, on-the-ground demonstration, outreach and technical assistance through the development of Community Food Systems that help people grow, process, market and distribute food in a sustainable manner. Growing power is a global model for sustainable community food systems and has done outreach trainings in Macedonia, Ukraine, Tennessee, London, Arkansas and more. Their Farm-City Market Basket Program is a year round food security program that supplies safe, healthy, and affordable vegetables and fruit to communities at a low cost. FCMB provides a market for small farmers to sell their food, while feeding communities in “food deserts” affordable healthy food. Growing Power would use the HCSRA to expand this program.

Picture the Homeless was founded on the principle that homeless people have civil and human rights regardless of their race, creed, color or economic status. Picture the Homeless was founded and is led by homeless people. They refuse to accept being neglected, and they demand that their voices and experience are heard at all levels of decision-making that impact them. Picture the Homeless is currently engaged in three grassroots organizing campaigns under its standing committees of: Civil Rights, Housing, and Rental Subsidies. The organizations strategies include grassroots organizing, leadership development, direct action, civil disobedience, documentation, participatory research, political education, media work, public education, and work with ally organizations and other stakeholders. They are campaigning to make a bus route between homeless shelters free for the men and women who must use it to find housing for the night, to end Warehousing (the practice of leaving warehouses empty until a neighborhood gentrifies, and then turn them into apartments), and working to establish and more effective rental subsidy program in New York City. Picture the Homeless will use the award to raise awareness about their organization.

Rural Resources is a non-profit organization dedicated to educating the community in the preservation and improvement of agricultural land, preserving their rural heritage, and developing a locally sustainable system of producing and marketing agricultural products. Rural Resources' Soil to Table Community Food Project seeks to develop a locally sustainable food system that connects local farmers producing food with community members who need high quality food at fair prices. The Farm & Food Teen Training Project expands their work to local teenagers. Rural Resources Mobile Farmers Market provides Greeneville and Greene County with fresh locally produced food via the food stamp ready Mobile Farmers' Market. Rural Resources is redefining who grows in the community as well as who can purchase and prepare locally grown food. Rural Resources would use this award to continue their mobile farmers’ market.

The Community Food Bank (CFB), Founded in 1976, has grown into a facility that acquires, stores and distributes 14 million pounds of food annually throughout Pima County. The Community Food Bank strives to reduce the impact of hunger and chronic malnutrition through programs of advocacy and nutrition education. The CFB’s Community Food Security Center (CFSC) supports community members’ ability to achieve self-reliance by learning and advocating for themselves. CFSC programs are a resource base for learning, doing and advocating. The CFSC has partners with community members and organizations to manage programs that promote self-reliance in all economic and social arenas particularly local food and people with low incomes. They are using their award to improve the infrastructure of the Home Gardening and Community Foods Consignment program.

The fundamental mission of Idaho Community Action Network (ICAN) is to provide a voice for Idahoans committed to progressive social change and to develop the power necessary to create those changes. They are dedicated to the following principles: Empowerment of disenfranchised people and development of new leadership, diverse participation, a stable, membership-driven funding base, the democratic process within and outside the organization, non-violent action in the spirit of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and member elected board members. ICAN’s seven Food Programs allow members to access free food through the Food Bank as well as the opportunity to participate in a purchase program and glean food. ICAN regularly conducts organizing campaigns on issues that impact its members. Campaigns provide ICAN with a mechanism to train its members and provide them with tools needed to participate in the public arena. ICAN will use the award towards its Building Healthy Communities Together Campaign.

The mission of the New Entry Sustainable Farming Project (NESFP) is to assist people with limited resources who have an interest in small-scale commercial agriculture, to begin farming in Massachusetts. Currently the project supports fifty farmers of Southeast Asian (specifically Hmong and Khmer), West African and Latino origins on farm sites in Dracut and Lancaster Massachusetts. NESFP carries out its mission in three ways. First, the project supports the vitality and sustainability of the region's agriculture. Secondly, NESFP builds long-term economic self-reliance and food security among participants and in their communities. Lastly, the project is expanding access to high quality, culturally appropriate foods in underserved areas. This award will be used to purchase the supplies that will aid new farmers in beginning their projects.

The mission of Gorge Grown Food Network is to build an economically and environmentally sound regional food system that engages, educates, and improves the health and well-being of their community. In 2006, Gorge Grown launched a farmers' market and reached out to local growers who were currently shipping to Portland and asked them to stay local. Since then, Gorge Grown has increased to 16 farmers and 600 people per week. Gorge Grown received a USDA grant to produce a community food assessment and they plan to conduct a regional community food assessment through the USDA in 2009. In addition, Gorge Grown has an education program which focuses on container gardening and also is working to create a pamphlet that highlights the power in a local food system and what people can do to be a part of it. Recently they launched their Mobile Farmer's Market, a new pilot project which came out of Gorge Grown's strategic planning session. The award will go in part to fund the Mobile Farmers Market and in part to continue their many educational programs and literature.

Brooklyn Rescue Mission Inc. (BRM) is a community-based organization in Bedford-Stuyvesant, Brooklyn that develops creative solutions to food justice, community health and the economic challenges their community endures on a daily basis. Brooklyn Rescue Mission’s programs include the Bed-Stuy Farm, the Neighborhood Farming Institute, the Food Outreach Programs and the Malcolm X Boulevard Community Farmers Market. In 2007 the Bed-Stuy Farm the Farm yielded 7,000 pounds of fresh organic produce, which was distributed to families at risk of hunger through BRM's emergency food programs. Community education programs are held at the Farm as well on topics such as nutrition and urban agriculture, entrepreneurship and leadership skills. The Neighborhood Farming Institute is a classroom and community center focused on the Farm while Their Food Outreach program provides weekly food pantry services. BRM also runs the Malcolm X Boulevard Community Farmers Market. They will use their award to fund operating costs for their Urban Farm and Neighborhood Farming Institute Programs.

If your organization wishes to be added to the Reinvesting In America database to assure receipt of the annual application, please contact us at HCSRA@worldhungeryear.org.

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