Episode 97 –Food Well Alliance: Growing Together

The podcast for project managers by project managers. Project Managing Community Gardens. Hear all about an innovative project to increase access to locally grown food and build healthier communities, by empowering local growers, prioritizing local food, and saving food-producing land in a fast-growing city. Table of Contents 01:37 … Meet Britni 02:22 … Food Well Alliance 04:18 … Connecting with a Passion 05:33 … Preparing for a PM Role 07:02 … Stakeholders 07:59 … Plant Eat Repeat Project 09:01 … Aluma Farm Project 13:57 … Communication with Stakeholders 15:03 … Working with City Governments 16:06 … Problem Statement Strategy 18:09 … Facing Obstacles 20:03 … Compost Issues 22:44 … Getting a Community Garden Started 24:55 … Resources Offered to Growers 26:58 … Face to Face with End Users 29:20 … Where to get Produce 29:42 … Advice for New PM’s 30:41 … Lessons Learned 31:43 … Closing BRITNI BURKHARDSMEIER:  I think my advice would be the importance of building your project management toolbox, so learning what are those best practices, whether it’s techniques of communication, how to interact with partners externally or internally.  What are those tools you need, you know, your templates for budget and timeline and meeting notes?  But then in addition to that also still being able to stay fluid and adaptable and recognizing that you may have to change things up because every project is slightly different.  Every partner on that project is slightly different.  NICK WALKER:  Welcome to Manage This, the podcast by project managers for project managers.  We’ve been listening to what you’ve been telling us about what subjects you’re interested in and what kinds of guests you’d like to hear from, and so we thank you for your input. Please keep the comments about our podcast coming.  So you can leave a comment on Google, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Stitcher, or whichever podcast listening app you use.  You can also leave comments on the Velociteach.com website or on our social media pages, it’s your feedback that brings the kind of guest we have on our program today.  And Bill Yates, I need to tell you, I’m not sure who suggested we have a podcast about food, but I’m certainly glad they did. BILL YATES:  It’s making me hungry just thinking about that.  Looking forward to getting into that.  So Britni is going to describe some projects that she’s worked with that are really unique, the stakeholders are unique, the problems to solve are unique.  And I think, regardless of the type of project we have, we can all learn from Britni. Meet Britni NICK WALKER:  So, let’s meet our guest, she’s Britni Burkhardsmeier, a project and impact manager at the Atlanta non-profit Food Well Alliance, a collaborative network of local growers, community leaders, and city leaders, working to build thriving community gardens and farms across Metro Atlanta.  The goal is to increase access to locally grown food in order to build healthier communities.  Britni holds a master’s in public health from Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health, with a concentration in global nutrition.  Prior to attending graduate school, Britni worked as program coordinator on the emergency health and nutrition team at Save the Children U.S. in Washington, D.C.  Britni, welcome to Manage This. BRITNI BURKHARDSMEIER:  Thank you for having me. Food Well Alliance NICK WALKER:  Let’s get started by just learning a little bit more about the Food Well Alliance. So how did that organization get started? BRITNI BURKHARDSMEIER:  So we started in 2015 with funding from our founding benefactor, the James M. Cox Foundation.  And we really got started because it was a vision between the Cox Foundation and Bill Bolling, the founder of the Atlanta Community Food Bank.  And so together they saw an opportunity to connect members of Atlanta’s local food movement to collectively build healthier communities. NICK WALKER:  And what about you?  I mean,