Featured Organization: EMERGE CT

In this Partner Profile we have the honor of introducing you to EMERGE CT, a Connecticut-based social enterprise committed to assisting formerly incarcerated people to successfully integrate back into their families and communities. 

We spoke with Cara Santino, Co-founder of the Restorative Food Justice Project at EMERGE CT to learn more. Before we dive into all things EMERGE CT, we want to share more about Cara:

Cara is a recent graduate of Syracuse University where they completed their M.S. in Food Studies. While there, they explored connections of food, race, prisons, and poverty. Cara used their graduate research, 14 years of on-the-ground food systems work, lived experiences with food insecurity, and experience working with returning citizens to develop and implement the Restorative Justice Food Project at EMERGE CT.

Thank you so much for taking the time to share more about your work!

Let’s get started!

First up, EMERGE CT’s mission: 
EMERGE Connecticut, Inc. is a self-sufficient social enterprise committed to assisting formerly incarcerated people successfully integrate back into their families and communities.

Give us your elevator pitch! 
EMERGE was founded in 2011 in New Haven, CT to support formerly incarcerated people reentering their community. Rather than replicating traditional short-term job placement programs that may feed into the cycle of recidivism, EMERGE centers long-term mental health and self-development needs of people returning home so that they can heal from the trauma of incarceration and build skills to navigate structural barriers to economic stability and mobility, health and wellness, and freedom from reincarceration. In April of 2021, EMERGE launched the Restorative Food Justice Project to link these barriers to achieving food security while strengthening the local food system.

What is one thing that makes your organization unique? 
EMERGE is the only re-entry organization in Connecticut linking the prison system with the food system. We operate the Restorative Food Justice Project on a community-based level, fostering leadership from the bottom up. EMERGE fundraised through Sustainable CT’s community match grant to be able to pay local food systems leaders of color to teach the classes, and to be able to source seeds and books from Black and Indigenous-led organizations. Overall, EMERGE is breaking down the barriers to achieving job security by being one of the few organizations in CT that openly hires and trains returning citizens.

Systems Leadership Approach

How does EMERGE partner with others to catalyze systems change? 
EMERGE develops community-based partnerships that center the experiences and knowledge of people whose stories disappear or who aren’t compensated in food systems work. For the Restorative Food Justice Project, we partnered with women-led organizations and BIPOC activists to teach workshops and collaborate for space. Cara designed a survey for returning citizens who would be participating in the program; this figured out what supplies and curriculum the project needed. With their input, we purchased Farming While Black from a Black-owned bookstore (People Get Ready) and seeds from Black and Indigenous agriculture organizations. These feedback loops support economic mobility within marginalized communities.

How has COVID-19 impacted your community and how has EMERGE responded?
COVID has severely limited job availability. What also makes it difficult for returning citizens to stay employed is the fact that hiring managers are biased against returning citizens and people of color. When a returning citizen is hired, it is typically with a low-paid position, so it is a struggle to pay for food. To address these racial and economic inequities, we compensate instructors $150 per class. It is our intention that graduates of the pilot of the Restorative Food Justice project can teach future classes if they choose. EMERGE’s core programming also ensures that every person who walks through the door will be guaranteed paid hours on construction sites. Lastly, EMERGE’s model centers healing from the trauma of incarceration.

The pandemic has caused many regulations to be loosened and new partnerships to be formed. Of the changes you have seen and made, which would you like to maintain moving forward? Are you seeing steps that food systems leaders can take to ensure lasting change?
In order to align with elements of political and economic justice and equity, we reimagined the value of work situated in the food-focused non-profit world. So, we prioritized and diverted funding to programming that returning citizens and BIPOC want to explore.  We believe that this creates lasting change.

The country has seen ongoing protests around systemic anti-Black racism in 2020, and a violent fascist coup attempt at the start of 2021. Systemic racism is not new, but there are more conversations happening around dismantling racism at the local, regional and national levels. How does your organization work to create a more equitable and explicitly anti-racist food system?
EMERGE contracts with local food systems leader of color who center anti-racist work in their teachings. These leaders connect the food system and the prison system in an immersive and accessible community-building way, through facilitating story-shares, listening to feedback of those most affected by racialized food insecurity, and celebrating diverse communities. Also, this project created a coalition of returning citizens and food justice advocates to ensure that everyone’s voice was a part of designing the curriculum, which included classes on food systems education, sustainable urban agriculture, food safety, and cultural cooking.

EMERGE Learnings

Given what you know now, what is one thing you wish you’d done differently as the organization developed? 
We don’t have any regrets! Everything that we’ve done has led us to where we are today.

What is one of your organization’s proudest achievements?
EMERGE recently celebrated its ten-year anniversary. Looking across the last decade, our staff has regularly created new programs to support crewmembers navigating structural barriers to their wellness and freedom as formerly incarcerated people. The 2021 Restorative Food Justice program is another example of our staff’s commitment to building root-level responses to the prison system and its toll on people’s emotional, mental, and physical health. Seeing how passionate and receptive our crew and staff were to the Food Justice program, we look forward to continuing conversations about food security and its relationship to the prison system.

What is one challenge you’re facing right now? Anything your fellow FSLN members might be able to help with? 
EMERGE is a social enterprise engaged in transitional employment. While this makes us resilient to fluctuations in funding, it also narrows the pool of grants available to us. So, as we seek to sustain the Restorative Food Justice program into the next year and the next, we will need individuals and community members to journey alongside us. Our 2021 pilot program was only possible because of the generous giving and expertise of community members in Greater New Haven. We invite support through donations and interested partners and volunteers to reach out to us about next year’s course.

Have you created any useful processes/resources that you’re particularly excited about? If so, please share!
Cara created a photoessay of the Restorative Food Justice Project. This project used photovoice and storytelling to discuss food system injustices from the point of view of returning citizens. It is also a celebratory and joyful depiction of resistance, community, and the power of food. Cara presented it at the 2021 Just Food Conference, hosted by The Culinary Institute of America and New York University, and organized by the Association for the Study of Food and Society, the Agriculture, Food, & Human Values Society, the Canadian Association for Food Studies, and the Society for Anthropology of Food and Nutrition. Link here.

Any quotes or words of wisdom that you’d like to share with fellow FSLN members? 

“Our food system needs a redesign if it’s to feed us without perpetuating racism and oppression.” Leah Penniman