This spotlight is a feature in a series of the USDA Community Food Project Competitive Grant Program (CFP). Grantees are doing some of the most innovative and collaborative projects to change local and regional food systems. WhyHunger’s Food Security Learning Center — also funded by a CFP grant — is profiling these organizations through dynamic stories and pictures, to give a real flavor of what the projects look like and how they’re accomplishing their goals. Today we’re thrilled to premiere our first video profile, by writer, photographer and filmmaker David Hanson.

As we wrote a few days ago, several of us from WhyHunger were in Arizona last week for the Closing the Hunger Gap conference, and we visited the San Xavier Community Farm on the Tohono O’odham Nation. In this short video — filmed at the San Xavier Farm — you can learn more about our friends at Tohono O’odham Community Action (TOCA), an exceptional organization dedicated to creating a healthy, culturally vital and sustainable community on the Nation, largely through re-establishing food traditions. Read David’s full narrative of TOCA here.

Since 2004, WhyHunger has featured USDA Community Food Project (CFP) grantees on a database as part of our Food Security Learning Center. The Community Food Projects Competitive Grant Program was started in 1996 to fight hunger and promote self-sufficiency in low-income communities. Community Food Projects are designed to increase food security by bringing together stakeholders from across the food system to assess strengths, establish links and relationships, and create solutions that work for the whole community.