Episodes
Thursday Dec 20, 2018
iEat Green -Alison Cohen- Why Hunger
Thursday Dec 20, 2018
Thursday Dec 20, 2018
Alison Meares Cohen is the Senior Director of Programs for WhyHunger, a non-profit organization supporting grassroots organizations implementing innovative, community-based solutions to hunger and poverty and participating in movement building. Alison is responsible for helping to develop and steward WhyHunger’s organizational vision and strategy and its implementation through its Grassroots Action Network, Nourish Network for the Right to Food, and Global Movements programs. Prior to joining WhyHunger, Alison served as the Northern Program Manager for Heifer International. From 2001 – 2008 she was responsible for developing partnerships throughout the northeast and midwest regions with local communities and like-minded organizations to build sustainable food systems where limited-resource families, communities and beginner farmers –both rural and urban -- have access to healthy food and income-earning opportunities. Prior to transferring to New York, Alison served as the director of Heifer International's first urban agriculture program based in Chicago, Illinois for five years. Alison has a master's degree in Sociology from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University and a bachelor’s degree in English and French literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. For the past twenty-five years she has worked with farmers and communities in West Africa, Latin America, the Caribbean, Canada and the United States. Alison lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two daughters, with whom she started the PS 29 Food and Farming Initiative that hosts a school vegetable garden and works to improve the quality of food served in the cafeteria.
Thursday Dec 13, 2018
iEat Green - Dena Merriam- Global Peace Initiative of Women
Thursday Dec 13, 2018
Thursday Dec 13, 2018
Dena Merriam is the Founder and Convener of Global Peace Initiative of Women and author of the new book, “My Journey Through Time; a spiritual Memoir of Life , Death and Rebirth”. Dena is also a managing partner and Vice Chairman of Finn Ruder, where she works in cultural marketing, creative services and works for religious and non profit organizations. In her spare time, she serves on the boards of the Interfaith Center of New York, AIM for Seva and Dharma Drum Mountain Buddhist Association. Dena is a former member of the board of Harvard University Center for the Study of World Religions and the International Center for Religion and Diplomacy. She was Co-Chair of the Millennium World Peace Summit, the first summit held at the United Nations General Assembly for more than 1500 of the world's religious leaders.
Thursday Dec 06, 2018
Thursday Dec 06, 2018
Nico Page is Chilean-American and grew up both in Chile and the U.S. As a high schooler in Chile, he got involved with student protests making videos and large-scale art and fell in love with organizing. Now a junior studying Literary Arts at Brown University in Providence, RI, he became involved with the Campaign for Fair Food during the Coalition of Immokalee Workers' March 2018 major action in New York City. He is taking a semester-long leave from Brown to intern with the Alliance for Fair Food in Immokalee, Fl, where he collaborates on student actions, makes videos, supports the community and is learning from the Coalition’s long history of organizing.
Leonel Perez has been a key leader of the award-winning human rights organization, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers (CIW), for over a decade. Mr. Perez worked for years in the fields of Florida and along the East Coast harvesting tomatoes, watermelon, and other crops. Today, as a part of the Fair Food Program, Mr. Perez and his colleagues educate tens of thousands of farmworkers’ on their rights in the fields on all farms participating in the Program, including the right to work free of slavery, sexual violence, and health and safety risks.
Mr. Perez also hosts shows on the CIW's community radio station and community communications, and throughout the year facilitates and conducts dozens of popular education trainings for weekly membership meetings. Finally, Ms. Perez represents the CIW at a national level, speaking publicly on the challenges faced by farmworkers in Florida, both during major actions with thousands of consumers and in dozens of presentations throughout the year. He has been featured in publications such as CNN’s Freedom Project and best-selling books such as Tomatoland (2017) and I am not a tractor (2018).