By Isabel Alvarez Vispo, URGENCI’s President.
“Sowing Solidarity, Cultivating Community.” That was the motto under which a hundred people from all over the world gathered at the ninth international symposium of URGENCI.
This meeting was special for many reasons. The first reason was that the last meeting, which was to be held in Manaus in 2021, had to be held online due to COVID, and although it was a good symposium, it was not a face-to-face meeting, which left many hugs pending. The second reason was the global context, which is very complicated for some and extremely violent for others. It is a context marked by extractivism and destruction, which makes it increasingly difficult for those of us who work on initiatives that seek to sustain life. The third is that we are a network that continues to grow with many new members joining, with much to share and many challenges to face together. For all these reasons, we arrived with a lot of energy and a great desire to exchange ideas, learn, and also set priorities and paths for the network and for community-supported food in the coming years.
To this end, we put together a three-day program that sought to cover the different issues we face in order to discuss them and also to exchange the different practices we are developing. A fundamental part of this program was having time to meet and exchange what we are doing.
The first day was entirely devoted to finding out where we would be staying and who we would be spending the next few days with. We did this through field visits, sharing activities and, above all, as we like to do, sharing food accompanied by the experiences of those who produce and sustain it.
Having time to get to know each other and create a space for relationships was the first necessary step in generating exchange in the different working groups over the following days. These were diverse groups in which farmers had their own spaces to exchange their practices and experiences, discussing climate change, the network’s political advocacy work at the local and international levels, the right to food and adequate nutrition, feminisms, intersectionality, and how to build safe spaces within our own movements or how to strengthen our internal and external communication to better understand and raise awareness of what we do. It has been particularly difficult, yet very necessary, to have a specific space in which to listen to the voices of regions where hunger and food are used as weapons of war.
Based on all of this and the richness of knowledge that has been shared, we have identified our main challenges and gathered ideas and priorities for the coming years.
These have been days of hard work and would have been impossible without the many people who have worked tirelessly to organize and sustain this meeting. From the incredible technical team we have in the network, to the volunteers, to the interpreters, without whom it would be much more difficult to have such rich exchanges, to the farmers in the area who have opened their doors to us so that we can see the local reality firsthand.
The very construction of the meeting and its sustainability is a demonstration of who we are: a network of activists who work together, appreciating the richness and also respecting the differences within our diversity, to continue weaving paths towards food sovereignty. A network of people connected to each other, but also to the territories and ecosystems that surround us, who understand care as something essential to who we are and what we do.
In short, a network that continues to sow solidarity, cultivate community, and, during these days of gathering, gather strength and hope. We continue to sow.
