10/12/2025
Episode 1 of our 5th season is out now!
We're excited to share the newest episode of Handpicked: Stories from the Field, “Food as Fertile Ground for Change” Cultivating Community: Food Justice in the Bow Valley and Beyond, a conversation rooted in the Bow Valley, where organizers, researchers, and community leaders came together to reflect on what food justice looks like when it’s built through relationships and everyday action.
In this episode, our host, Dr. Charlotte Spring speaks with event co-organizers Dr. Lauren Kepkiewicz and Avni Soma about their 2024 gathering, “Cultivating Community.” Their reflections open onto a wider set of voices, Syma Habib, Jun Cacayuran, Melissa West Morrison, and Dr. Tatenda Mambo, whose stories offer grounded perspectives on community-led food aid, Indigenous food relationships, regenerative agriculture, migrant organizing, and the emotional resonance of food in shaping belonging.
Rather than treating food systems as problems to solve, the episode explores how care, responsibility, and collaboration can grow new possibilities, slowly, locally, and with intention.
If you’re interested in food justice, community organizing, or the many ways people are reshaping local food systems, check out this episode.
🎧 Listen here (or wherever you get your podcasts): https://researchcentres.wlu.ca/centre-for-sustainable-food-systems/knowledge-sharing/handpicked-podcast.html
