21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge

The FSNE Racial Equity Challenge returns in April 2022.

Food Solutions New England will host its 8th version of the 21-Day Racial Equity Habit-Building Challenge from April 4th to the 24th in 2022.

Early registration is now open for the next Challenge in April 2022!

In 2021, nearly 9,000 individuals and 900 officially participating organizations joined our shared journey of learning, expanding our knowledge, and charting a course of action to dismantle racism in our food system and our world.

The 2021 Challenge materials archive can be found here, for use throughout the year. See the FAQ area below for additional resources.

We are deeply grateful to our wonderful 2021 Planning Team who helped to update this year’s materials and programming.

About the Challenge

The 21-Day Racial Equity Habit Building Challenge is simple!

You commit to deepening your understanding of, and willingness to confront, racism for twenty-one consecutive days in April of 2021. The Challenge will raise your awareness, change your understanding and shift the way you behave.

However, the Challenge goes beyond individual or interpersonal racism by helping to demystify structural and institutional racism and white supremacist patterns that are sometimes invisible to people. Finally, the Challenge inspires you to act, on your own or with others in your organization, business or group, to dismantle these systems, to make changes in your work and the world that can build true equity and justice for all.

Learn More About the Challenge! Frequently Asked Questions.

FSNE as a network supports a shared set of values in the food system we are building together. In 2013, FSNE publicly "centered" the racial equity value of our work and, in addition to supporting each other to learn, grow and change toward a more racially just system, the network was inspired by the work of Dr. Eddie Moore, Debby Irving and Dr. Marguerite Pennick-Parks to adapt their 21-Day Habit-Building Challenge idea to our food system network. FSNE has been organizing and hosting the Challenge every year since 2015. It started with a couple of hundred regional participants and has grown to more than 7,000 participants (as well as many organizations adapting the Challenge for their own unique needs). Please feel free to use the Challenge in any way that works for you. If you decide to customize the Challenge, we ask for short statement of attribution with a link back to FSNE as a source of inspiration for your work.
During every morning of the Challenge, you'll receive an email "prompt" with a short reading, video or audio file. You are encouraged to take about ten to fifteen minutes each day with the material in the prompt, though we will provide extra resources in case you want to dig further into the day's topic. You have the option to log into our online forums (links will be provided) if you'd like to discuss the prompts in a supported and moderated environment. We also encourage you to share your experience on social media using the hashtag #FSNEEquityChallenge or have conversations with friends, co-workers or other community members who may also be doing the Challenge.
Initially the Challenge was designed for food system organizations in the six New England states. It rapidly expanded from there. Today, anyone is invited to participate from anywhere. The Challenge material, much of which is universally useful in understanding race and equity issues, are somewhat focused on the North American context. Approximately 40% of participants are not directly involved in food system work directly, but report significant benefits from doing the Challenge nonetheless, as issues of land access, food, health, hunger, etc. are of universal applicability. And we all eat! We now have many participants from out the US.   About 80% of Challenge participants identify as white or of European ancestry primarily. About 20% of Challenge participants are not new to racial equity and justice work, yet they find new and useful resources in this program to compliment their existing knowledge and skill. Currently the Challenge materials are delivered in English but we hope to be able to provide additional languages in future years.
Both. And it's your choice. You can certainly do the Challenge on your own using the email prompts you receive every morning during the Challenge. But we are learning that the work of making our region -- and our food system -- more just and equitable requires a team effort! This year we are expanding our menu of resources and tools to support your group at school, work, church or any other entity to take on the Challenge together!
It's your choice, but it's great if each person registers in order to get the daily email prompts bright and early on each morning of the Challenge. Whoever is coordinating conversations or other related efforts within your organization can manage those activities internally. Alternatively, one or two people can register with us and then have a consistent plan to forward the daily prompts and other program materials to participants in your group. It's up to you to determine which would work best for you and your team.
It's ideal if you can do a little bit with the the daily prompts Monday through Friday, perhaps saving the "going deeper" extra material for another time. However, we realize sometimes it's hard to keep it going for the full twenty-one days! The links you will receive will stay live so that you can come back later in the year. Also, don't forget that you'll have the weekends to get caught up!
Good news! It's a time to get caught up and reflect. We will send weekend prompts on Saturdays and Sundays to help you think about the five days of weekday prompts. The weekends are a great time to get caught up on anything you missed during the week or check out some of the extra resources on topics of interest. Some participants use the weekend to write in their journals or connect with friends and family about something they learned during the week's Challenge activities.
There is no magic formula to change behavior, but committing to three weeks of consistently exploring the impact of race in the food system provides an intentional way to uncover racial inequities and injustices, as well as to discover the many ways we can individually and collectively promote a more just and equitable food system for all.
Yes! There is no charge to participate in the 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge. The Food Solutions New England network organizes the Challenge as part of their commitment to building racial equity in our food system. FSNE's work is supported by grants and donations. If you or your business or organizations is experiencing abundance in the form of cash resources, please consider donating to FSNE to support our work! Thank you!
This Challenge is just one part of our network's commitment to make racial equity and justice non-negotiable parts of the food system we are creating together. The 21-Day format, inspired by our colleagues who have been doing equity and justice work for decades, creates a pulse of focused energy and learning materials that can be used during the Challenge as well as throughout the year. The 21-Day Challenge is not meant to be any sort of panacea or performative exercise. FSNE, as a network and as individual organizations, are on their own continuing journeys to understand and dismantle white supremacy culture in their own work and support one another in the process. We seek to become actively anti-racist and build a network and food system that embodies justice and liberation.

 

 

 

Creative Commons LicenseFSNE 21-Day Racial Equity Challenge materials by Food Solutions New England are licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution – Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. Please use materials with attribution back to source. Not for commercial gain.