Name: Isabel

Senior

Major: Environmental Science

CFS Concentration: Field Studies in Civic Engagement

Every Saturday I return from work dirty, exhausted, and satisfied. During the one hour and thirty minute commute home from the farm in Englewood I proudly flaunt the soil under my fingernails and all over my clothes. If I’m lucky I’ll get to bring home a bucket full of fresh produce I harvested that day. I work for The Urban Canopy, a business that runs a cohort of urban farms on the South Side of Chicago; and I couldn’t have chosen a more perfect way to end my college experience.

Working with an urban farm is a pretty idealistic career choice. The pay is low, the future uncertain, and the people extremely passionate. We hold our meetings in a local coffee shop on the South Side and the organization operates using a consensus-based model, which means all employees must be in agreement before we make important decisions, like hiring a new member. The consensus model enables us to diffuse authority more equitably among employees. Rather than one person having all or most of the decision-making power, each employee has one vote. It takes a lot more time and patience to make decisions, but it also gives each person the chance to voice concerns and offer improvements to proposals, making for a stronger decision and a more cohesive group.

Our reason for operating in this way is because we believe it’s necessary to act out the same equitable power relations among ourselves internally that we hope to create externally, on the ground. When working with low-income communities it is common to get into the mentality of “fixing” or “helping”; and the negative implications of colonialism that accompany this kind of work is hard to get away from. For these reasons we aim to be equal partners with the communities we work with, which means listening to their concerns and advice, as well as hiring full-time employees from these very communities.

The Urban Canopy has taught me a lot about community work and how establishing equitable human relationships, both internally and externally, is the essential base of any sustainable community project. I have been inspired by my coworkers’ passion and unceasing motivation to address problems of food access in the best way possible, and I’ve realized that this is the type of work I would like to pursue in my life after college.