Leading with Values
Like the four directions of a compass, our organizational values guide us to build the vibrant, resilient, and joyful world we know is possible.
Introducing Kearsarge Food Hub’s Organizational Values: Inclusive Engagement, Collaborative Stewardship, Conscientious Innovation, and Joyful Renewal!
Since day one, the Kearsarge Food Hub has been a values-driven organization, and yet it was not until this year that we sat down to articulate them in words, pass them officially through our board of directors, and move into a new era of actively using these values as guideposts for how we the work we do.
The process for coming to our four core values has been intentional and collaborative, reminding us that its not only the outcome that matters but the process as well. It’s relatively easy to come up with dozens and dozens of words that reference things that we care about and want to prioritize in this work; yet it’s another challenge altogether to make sure everyone’s voice is heard, to come to a consensus together, and to arrive at the core values that we all elect to be accountable to in all areas of our work.
Together, we found our way to four core, guiding values:
Inclusive Engagement
We center equity by amplifying access, belonging, and shared power for all neighbors, striving to ensure that all voices are able to shape our work and benefit from it.
Collaborative Stewardship
We care for our land, people, and resources by nurturing mutual partnerships, building resilient systems, and committing to long-term impact. We tend to our shared future with integrity and interdependence.
Conscientious Innovation
We imagine — and bring into being — bold, necessary change rooted in lived experience, community insight, and thoughtful reflection. Our creativity is grounded in relevance and responsibility.
Joyful Renewal
We embrace joy as a source of energy, connection, and cultural rejuvenation — making space to delight in the fruits of our labor and honoring celebration as an essential part of collective flourishing!
See these values in action in this short film:
We will recommit to these values over and over again, returning to them as a north star, alongside our vision, to guide us in both the seemingly mundane decisions that we make day in and day out to the strategic decisions about where the organization is heading in the short and long term. They help us build bridges between strategy and action, between how we operate internally to the services we provide to the community.Because… values are more than words: They are the glue that holds us together.
Values are stories about what matters. They are the heart of our strength. The stories we share are our super power - they can be used to build both beautiful and terrible things. And the tricky thing about stories is we tend to forget our agency in writing them.
As we started forming the Kearsarge Food Hub 10 years ago, we quickly realized that when you unravel all the problems of the food system, it comes back down to the values that drive it: values of short term gain, extraction, dominance. Using food - or the lack thereof - as a weapon, as a tool for oppression, coercion and genocide. We’ve seen it throughout history and we’re seeing it today. And, it is reclaiming the right to their food that can bring a people back to life.
To rewrite the story of food means to rewrite the values that guide us and how we choose to live on this planet. This is what the work we do here at KFH is all about - rewriting the story of food, pushing back against the status quo that continues to cause such immense harm.
Because, as writer Jarod Anderson puts it in his memoir Something in the Woods Loves You: “If we do not exercise our agency, willful choice, and actively seek the change we wish, we are choosing the status quo.”
It is up to us to decide which stories motivate our behavior, which stories build our future. It’s our stories that allow us to be greater than the sum of our parts.
Our values can transcend our politics, our differences, and our conflicts - giving us the tools we need to build creative and caring systems that we can all rally behind.
Thank you to everyone who made this process possible:
Our talented facilitator Darnell Adams from Silvo Cooperative for her measured, skillful, and effective approach to bringing in the voices of our entire team to craft these values.
The entire KFH team - board, staff, volunteers - for their care and participation in coming up with these values together.
Our creative partner in making the short film, Alana Redden. This visual representation of our values would not exist without her creative contributions. With her help, we get to show you all exactly how these values translate into action.