Poster courtesy of Sam Shain The Great

Northeast Event Planning Intern

Applications due Feb. 22, but will be accepted until position is filled.

Company Description:
CoFED – the Cooperative Food Empowerent Directive – is a national cooperative network and training program committed to empowering students to create ethically-sourced, cooperatively-run food enterprises on college campuses. CoFED provides week-long retreats and resources with our regional organizers to support student groups as they open up their own food co-ops on their campus. Our mission is to cultivate a more sustainable, community-oriented culture through college campuses.

We’re looking for a fast-learning intern interested in sustainable food movements, event planning and/or cooperative careers and alternative business to support the development of CoFED’s events in the northeast, including but not limited to our March Leaders Retreat and the June Summer Incubation. This position will require both attention to detail and a willingness to learn on your feet and take initiative on projects.

Hours: 10-15+ hours a week.

Job Duties:   

• Assisting the Regional Organizer and related CoFED Staff in all aspects of planning for each event, including but not limited to:
  • Searching for and securing suitable locations
  • Securing food donations through sustainable food organizations/companies
  • Corresponding and following up with speakers and students
  • Developing registration documents, creative tracking processes and ticketing
  • Development of publicity materials and strategy
  • Brainstorming event themes and activities + creative implementation
  • Developing and/or assisting with fundraising events
• Self-directed projects
  • Potential opportunities to create and lead relevant workshops.

Opportunities:

• Discounted admission to retreats, relevant food conferences, food events and/or dinner parties
• Gain skills in online management tools and event planning;
• Exposure to cooperative businesses, consensus decision-making processes, anti-oppression training, food justice and related concepts in action;
• Excellent networking opportunities with influential movers and shakers in the food movement;
• Experience working with a small team in a fast-paced, professional environment where your ideas and input are valued and desired;
• Entrance into a nationally-recognized organization within a quickly growing field;
• Professional support and connections through advisers and partnering organizations

Qualifications:  

• Demonstrated interest in sustainable food movements, cooperative movements and/or sustainable and alternative business.
• Ability to travel to NYC for monthly meetings
  • Students in the NYC Metropolitan area will be given preference if all else is equal.
• Experience planning events in school or elsewhere.
• Excellent verbal and written communication skills.
• Comfort working virtually and in person.
• Experience with GoogleDocs, Excel, etc.
• Ability to take initiative.
• Students who can remain through the end of the Summer Incubation (approx. June 3rd) will be given preference.

Job Begins:  March 1st, 2012. If the candidate is a good fit, the position can be extended through the summer.

Compensation: Unpaid, but we can work with your school to get credit. CoFed staff will commit time to supporting professional development and connecting to opportunities.

To apply, please fill out the highlighted section of this document: https://docs.google.com/a/cofed.org/document/d/1Pvsjl758TplYW3kW3Yasg8AzafwPSZ6c6N9bwjuadsc/edit  and send it with a resume and short cover letter describing your qualifications, goals and expectations. Send to jobs@cofed.org and cc christine@cofed.org. Applications received before Feb 22nd will be given priority, but will be accepted on a rolling basis until position is filled.

The official description will be up soon, but here’s a teaser. If you’re interested, email Christine@cofed.org!

We’re looking for a fast-learning intern interested in sustainable food movements, event planning and/or cooperative careers and alternative business to support the development of CoFED’s events in the northeast, including but not limited to our March Leaders Retreat and the June Summer Incubation. This position will require both attention to detail and a willingness to learn on your feet and take initiative on projects. We are seeking to fill this position soon, with a starting date of March 1. Applications received before Feb 22nd will be given priority, but we will consider applications on a rolling basis until position is filled.

You’ll be a crucial part of planning awesome events like these:

The only thing that will redeem mankind is cooperation. ~ Bertrand Russell

Cooperatives are a reminder to the international community that it is possible to pursue both economic viability and social responsibility. ~ Ban Ki-moon

“Co-operative enterprises provide the organisational means whereby a significant proportion of humanity is able to take into its own hands the tasks of creating productive employment, overcoming poverty and achieving social integration.”
~ Boutros Boutros-Ghali

In realizing the need to strip the world of corporate greed, what better place to start than by freeing our campuses from the hands of multinational corporations? College campuses are over-run with corporations like Starbucks. It has happened in communities everywhere: small businesses have been fading out to larger multinational corporations, companies that control the majority of wealth and power in their markets, allowing for little to no competition. The college campus is one such community. Today, you would be hard-pressed to find a campus that has not been overtaken by fast food and corporate influence.

This is exactly why students, the leaders of the Occupy movement, are choosing to occupy their campus food systems. We here at CoFED are watching in awe as some of our CoFEDerates in Seattle and Philadelphia, leaders in their local Occupy movements, manifest the ideals of the Occupy movement through the creation of sustainable local business that support people through cooperation.

Anshika Kumar, a CoFEDerate from the University of Washington in Seattle, reports that,

“The occupy movement has ignited a fire behind, and created a worldwide platform for, the beliefs and injustices that drive the work that I do every day… One of the most exciting prospects to me of this movement is the collective awakening of the fact that our current economic system does not work for the people… This mass mobilization of people who are realizing these truths and are actively seeking answers and alternatives represent an unparalleled opportunity to introduce the concept of cooperatives, and cooperative principles, into the mix of solutions that [are] going to get us out of this mess”.

And we find that the idea is spreading; students at the Bogazici University in Istanbul, Turkey, recently reached out to Anshika and her team in Seattle. Students there have been occupying the Starbucks on their college campus for more than a month. Here’s a look into the Occupy Starbucks protest – through a youtube video and a blog.

Occupy Starbucks evolved out of a desire for healthy and affordable food on their campus after Starbucks – among other multinational corporations – encroached upon their campus – forcing out a student-friendly canteen which once fed students whether they could afford the meal or not.

“With the introduction of these global firms, the university has become a market for the commercial activities of multinational corporations. There is enough space for everyone but us: from the CEOs who teach in our school to the employers that scout young employees for their companies. There is no affordable food, no place for having a real conversation, and nobody asks what we want. We could tell them if they asked us. But, because they have no intention of asking, we must make ourselves heard. We have decided to reclaim our campus”.

Similar stories are materializing around the world. We are thrilled to hear of the strength and commitment among those Occupying Starbucks at Bogazici and look forward to hearing more of their story in the coming weeks. It is now that we must bring these realizations to life on campuses and in communities around the world. If 2011 was the year of the protester, then 2012, the International Year of the Cooperative, sets the stage for the birth of an entirely new social structure.

The concept of social entrepreneurship has made business owners out of students who otherwise wouldn’t have considered entrepreneurship, such as Melissa Eddison, a 22-year-old GWU senior who is working to open the Funkstown Food Collective on the GWU campus in late 2012.

The cafe will serve locally grown organic food and has a business model that combines for-profit and nonprofit components, with an option for students and low-income patrons to volunteer at the cafe for food credits.

“This was another way I could effect change,” says Eddison, who is majoring in international economics.

Eddison, who is slated to graduate from GWU in December, says the search for capital for her food collective through fellowships, angel investors and other sources has been humbling.

As Eddison’s friends are fine-tuning their résumés and lining up job interviews, she’s working with third-year law students on incorporation paperwork, developing a marketing plan and working with finance professors to iron out the wrinkles in her business plan.

“It’s thrilling to be laying the bricks as I go, but it’s also scary,” she says.

Read about student social enterprise at the full article, here.

It was a clear and beautiful Santa Barbara Sunday when I was first contacted by three girls in Colorado who wanted to start a food co-op. I’m always excited to meet people with a passion for food and cooperatives. I had no idea what these girls would accomplish in a few short months.

I should provide some context: In addition to being a prolific blogger, I am also the Southern California Regional Director for an organization called the Cooperative Food Empowerment Directive (or CoFed), a small 501(c)3 dedicated to restructuring the food system by providing students with the tools, resources and training necessary for starting food co-operatives on their campuses.

On Monday, May 9th, the ASSOCIATED PRESS released a story highlighting the trend of students launching food co-ops on college campuses.

Amazingly, this same story was then printed in newspapers and on websites all over the United States – including the Washington Post, Yahoo! Finance, Santa Fe New Mexican, Boston Globe, Connecticut Post, San Francisco Examiner, MSNBC Today, San Francisco Chronicle, Sioux City Journal, and the list goes on and on and on…”

We’re stoked that BSFC (the collective who inspired the creation of CoFed) is getting this national media attention, and we couldn’t be more thrilled to see the campus food cooperative movement continuing to grow and spread like wildfire!!!

Here’s the story:

By: STEPHANIE REITZ, ASSOCIATED PRESS

MIDDLETOWN, Conn. — Not all college students are willing to live on cold pizza, ramen noodles and greasy takeout.

Some, like Wesleyan University junior Nica Latto, prefer wedges of locally produced artisanal cheeses added to the mix, perhaps a gouda with a slightly nutty undertone or a Gruyere for a fondue party while studying with classmates.

This means that their goal of a cooperative café at George Washington University – within walking distance to the White House – is now a few steps closer to being achieved. So the next time 10,000 youth converge in DC for a sustainable future, they’ll be able to buy lunch at a student-run food co-op that’s fully aligned with our generation’s ecological values. YEAH!!!

GW Food Co-op student leader Melissa Eddison (second from left) wins the $10,000 inaugural Knapp Fellowship for Entrepreneurial Service-Learning award – April 26, 2011

GW Food Co-op leaders Melissa, Ellie and Erin say, “Basically, this humble idea of ours has been recogniz ed by GW as a promising and desirable addition to campus and for that we must be thankful! So much has happened since January when we started this journey and it will continue to grow, change, and evolve in the

coming months. If any of you are going to be here over the summer and would like to get in on some of the negotiations for space, organizational structure, suppliers, inventories, fundraising–we’ll take any spare time you have. If not, let us know if you would like to do any work remotely! If nothing else, keep checking our blog for updates and we look forward to all of your continued support in the Fall.”

A Café for the Community

A co-op that sells locally grown food wins the inaugural Knapp Fellowship for Entrepreneurial Service-Learning award at GW’s 2011 Service-Learning Symposium April 26.

April 27, 2011 — GW Today

Junior Melissa Eddison’s idea of a nonprofit, community-run co-op cafe that will feature sustainable, local food earned her the first Steven and Diane Robinson Knapp Fellowship for Entrepreneurial Service-Learning award at the university’s 2011 Service-Learning Symposium April 26.

“Melissa’s project takes on an important social issue —healthy, sustainable food— and responds with an innovative business model that also serves as an educational platform for GW students and the surrounding community,” said John Forrer, associate director for GW’s Institute for Corporate Responsibility, who served as Ms. Eddison’s project adviser.“It is a perfect example of how taking corporate responsibility to heart can spawn a great business plan, promote community values and help improve people’s quality-of-life, all at the same time.”

Melissa and Ellie representing FJA and GW Student Food Cooperative at GW's Earth Day Fair

As president of the GW Food Justice Alliance, Ms. Eddison helps manage GW’s community gardens and teach the GW community how to

grow and compost food. The next step, she said, is showing the community how to prepare it— and she said the café is the “missing piece.”

“When I learned that I won the award, a wave of relief came over me,” said Ms. Eddison. “It was a moment of re-enforcement—that this idea that I had, that I have been sharing with whoever will listen, is being recognized by GW as an institution. GW has instilled faith in the idea, and it’s our turn to deliver!

“We want to inspire students and the community to make it their own space—putting local art on the walls, holding events there and using it as a place to raise funds and awareness about whatever people feel passionate about,” she added. “It’s all about enriching GW as a community.”

“Service learning is a mutually beneficial tool for both the student and the community and in an overarching sense, it strengthens the relationship of the university and the city of D.C.,” said Ms. Eddison. “Whenever possible, get students out of the classroom and into the field; treat them like grownups and they will exceed your expectations, guaranteed.”

To visit the George Washington Today homepage, click here.