Share ThisHighmark Bright Blue Futures is the organization’s charitable giving and community involvement program. This series provides in-depth articles on its work, community partners, and leaders as they advance their goals around Community Health and Community and Economic Resilience. In this three-part article, we explore how the program and its community partners are addressing the challenges of food insecurity as part of their focus on supporting economic stability for individuals and families.
Highmark Bright Blue Futures unifies strategic community giving and involvement across our organization’s four-state health insurance market and beyond. It leverages the kind of funding, resources, and influence that come with being an organization that had $26 billion in revenues in 2022. Yet, much of the program’s approach and work remains exceptionally localized.
“We genuinely believe local groups and leaders have the best understanding of what’s needed to bring economic stability to individuals and families in their community and what solutions and approaches will be effective,” explains Kenya Boswell, senior vice president, Community Affairs. “In each of our strategic impact areas, we look for organizations that meet community members where they are and have the ability to make a difference.”
This three-part article on addressing food insecurity is a good example, featuring three different partner organizations that are deeply rooted in the communities they serve: Bright Spot Farm, Massachusetts Avenue Project, and Soul Fire Farm. From farming to philosophy, education to activism, youth work to support for seniors, immediate aid to generation-based solutions, these organizations and others find their own localized ways to take on the nationwide challenge of food insecurity and related disparities.
“The challenges, and best solutions to those challenges, vary from community to community and region to region,” adds Mike Ball, vice president, Community Affairs, Highmark Western and Northeastern New York. “So we support diverse, dynamic organizations that approach community work from different perspectives. Our focus is on how we can help organizations be effective.”
Photo courtesy of Soul Fire Farm and used with permission.
Soul Fire Farm is tackling food insecurity from the ground up — literally. A Highmark Blue Shield of Northeastern New York Blue Fund grant recipient, Soul Fire Farm sits on 80 acres of Mohican land in northeastern New York. Much of the land is rocky, and some considered it uninhabitable for crops, but Soul Fire Farm founders Leah Penniman and Jonah Vitale-Wolff took on the task. They spent years lovingly and respectfully tending the soil and infrastructure, treating the land as “a relative, not a commodity.” The gentle, natural, and sustainable farming practices that have made today’s farm what it is are also an homage to the resilience of plants, animals, and the land itself.
The farm is central to a broader mission, including to “raise and distribute life-giving food as a means to end food apartheid. With deep reverence for the land and wisdom of our ancestors, we work to reclaim our collective right to belong to the earth and to have agency in the food system.”
Using the framework of food apartheid (as opposed to “food desert”) is just one way that Soul Fire Farm foregrounds the connection between food insecurity and racial and economic injustices. Similarly, its work goes far beyond growing and distributing food. For example, its “Solidarity Shares” program combines both the farm’s resources and community partnerships to provide local community members with fruits, vegetables and eggs, but also medicine and other items. A no-cost doorstep delivery of shares is provided for those who lack transportation. Another example of community partnership is participating with Highmark Blue Shield of Northeastern New York and other groups in the Schenectady Greenmarket and its Food Box Program. Across many different programs, a common theme is a highly collaborative, community-focused approach that is intended to reinforce the agency of community members, partners, and future farmers.
Photo courtesy of Soul Fire Farm and used with permission.
Soul Fire Farm’s footprint — and programming — have continued to grow and evolve over time to meet the needs of its community. The sheer number of households applying for its CSA and Solidarity Shares programs signified a much larger need than any one farm or organization could meet. In response, they built out Soul Fire in the City, a program serving the communities of Albany, Troy, and Schenectady. The program creates raised bed gardens in backyards of residences and community gardens throughout the area, then offers ongoing guidance and education so families can grow, harvest, and preserve their own food, moving them toward greater self-reliance and resilience.
But even that is just the beginning.
“Our Food Sovereignty Action Steps really empower people to learn and be the change they want to see,” explains Cheryl Whilby, co-executive director of communications and development of Soul Fire Farm. “This platform provides information and resources to community members to demonstrate how they can be involved at both the individual and institutional level in contributing to a more just food system.”
That can mean inspiring students to speak with their schools about local and equitable food sourcing, guiding individuals to join a local food pantry or community garden, and much more. Many groups and leaders would find it daunting to go this deeply into the root causes and foundational solutions for food insecurity, but for Soul Fire Farm, this kind of empowerment is essential to its mission.
Photo courtesy of Soul Fire Farm and used with permission.
One of Soul Fire Farm’s hallmarks is its variety of farmer training programs.
“Our information and resource sharing really make us unique,” says Whilby. “We want to always be open and transparent about our knowledge and practices, and model what successful nonprofit spaces, especially those that are Black-led and Brown-led, can look like.”
The organization’s “3D Skill Shares” are virtual and in-person workshops presented by Black and Brown agriculture experts aimed at helping members of the Black, Indigenous and/or People of Color (BIPOC) community to develop and advance farming and related skills. Topics range from the business planning of farms to soil health, crop planning, agroforestry, and carpentry.
Soul Fire Farm’s immersion programs take learning one step farther. BIPOC individuals across the country apply for and attend these immersive programs to learn about Afro-Indigenous farming practices. The organization also offers online training and participates in speaking engagements, including at colleges and universities. Educating students about the injustices experienced by Black and Brown farmers, they also encourage young people to see the opportunities that exist for them to become involved in the food system. All of this ties to another part of Soul Fire Farm’s mission: “We are training the next generation of activist-farmers and strengthening the movements for food sovereignty and community self-determination.”
Photo courtesy of Soul Fire Farm and used with permission.
Knowledge sharing, especially with the younger generation, is central to almost all Soul Fire Farm programming.
“We focus on building out rather than building up,” Whilby says. “Our goal is to spread our learnings and teachings to other individuals and inspire them to start similar organizations and platforms within their own communities.”
With the help of a Highmark Blue Fund grant, Soul Fire Farms broke ground in October 2022 on a new Program Center that will allow them to expand knowledge-sharing even further. The major infrastructure update will expand their facilities to include a teaching kitchen, dining area, library, root cellar, and collaboration spaces — all in the service of sharing knowledge and expertise and offering new opportunities for growth to those interested. Whilby describes the expanded and improved infrastructure as “the seed being planted to let us truly expand our reach.”
She adds that the commitment to knowledge-sharing even guides their selection process.
“We look at all our program applicants through that lens of how far they’ll take the information,” she says. “How likely are applicants to take their learnings back to their community? Do they plan to start their own organization? Do they mention becoming a farmer or gardener? We look at program participants as future ambassadors for change.”
Aided by those ambassadors, Soul Fire Farm envisions truly ambitious and transformative goals.
“The North Star of our work is ultimately to see more Black and Brown farmers on land in our country,” Whilby says. “By 2050, we want to see Black farmers regeneratively steward 100,000 farms on 10 million acres of rural and urban land.”
Ball notes that the Program Center expands Soul Fire Farm’s impact across the board — from contributing to change on a national scale to helping to better meet the needs of local communities.
“We are proud to invest in the Program Center, and to help Soul Fire Farm expand its ability to bring diverse communities together and improve food access and food equity,” he says. “The new facility will help them reach even more people with sustainable farming education while also supporting year-round work to get healthy food to the people who need it throughout the Capital Region.”
Cheryl Whilby (she/her) first discovered her passion for food systems during her senior year of undergrad. Through her studies, she deepened her knowledge in various food insecurity issues and became most interested in how these matters disproportionately impact BIPOC communities. Since moving to Albany, NY in 2016, Cheryl has spent her time finding ways to be more involved in her local food system and address food insecurity in the community.
From 2016 to 2019, she coordinated the recovery of fresh fruits and vegetables from local farms, wholesalers, and other community partners for redistribution to food pantries, soup kitchens, and shelters as Capital Roots’ Squash Hunger Coordinator (Troy, NY). She has served as Market Manager of Schenectady Greenmarket for five years, leading initiatives centered on making the market more accessible and welcoming for Black and Brown communities. In 2023, she transitioned into an Executive Director role with the market to focus on building the market’s fundraising strategies to sustain the growing market’s food access programming and initiatives. She is also one of the 12 Black food system leaders who developed the Anti-Racist Farmers Market Toolkit in collaboration with the Farmers Market Coalition.
Highmark Health and its subsidiaries and affiliates comprise a national blended health organization that employs more than 42,000 people and serves millions of Americans across the country.
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