Hello all, I am eager to share with you. This is long overdue and I sit excitedly to write to you. For those of you I don't know personally, I look forward to meeting and hopefully working with you to better serve our collective communities. Thank you for joining me.
We are Rogue Food Unites.
Our mission is to use food to heal individuals and communities during times of crisis. RFU coordinates with locally-invested food businesses to provide fresh, nutritious, and shelf-stable ingredients, assembled and delivered to our communities through RFU coordination. While meeting the fundamental human right to food, RFU strengthens local economies, fostering collaboration, preserving jobs for residents, building resilience, and ensuring food security and sovereignty in Oregon and its communities. We respect and value diverse life experiences, identities, and heritages, ensuring that all voices are valued and heard.
We are who we are because a small group of amazing people chose to bear witness to a fire that raged through our community. We saw a need and planted our feet to show up in the way that we knew how: food. We are hospitality. We were meant to host, to create joy, to comfort, to commune over something so simple as food. I am beyond honored to continue to participate in this project. We will not let this fall. We said we would be here until the need is no longer. Wouldn't it be phenomenal if the need was no longer? Maybe for the next generation, we will have moved the needle a tiny bit. This is our commitment and lifelong goal to make an impact. It is an offering to the place where I was brought up. For our team, this has been an opportunity to jump into the current, and swim fast enough with enough momentum to divert the flow.
From day one we swam. We worked in partnership with restaurants to find our lanes and be of service. We looked for partnerships with larger organizations to be able to fund our project. We asked for private donations, secured a day's worth of funds, and bolted to get meals. Hundreds of volunteers showed up. It worked. This worked, only because we had a team of resilient, committed locals who were unwilling to give up. It was a breath of fresh air while choking on the smoke of our neighbor’s homes. We had community knitted together so quickly, so without pause, led by heart to show up. We had been separated by a pandemic. Through crisis, we have been able to find the shiny, committed project of RFU.
Soon, we were working with the American Red Cross in Jackson County to fulfill the food mission of those affected by the Almeda fire. It was unlike anything any of us ever imagined. Dozens of restaurants working overtime with passion. They delivered, and we were able to help coordinate the efforts. We were so grateful when United Way of Jackson County stepped in to be our fiscal sponsor while we raised funds to keep feeding people. We were blessed with short contracts with Operation BBQ Relief and World Central Kitchen. Then, the coolest thing happened. The State of Oregon called and said they believed in our project. They clearly saw that locals knew locals. Oregon Department of Human Services (ODHS), and more specifically, the Office of Resilience and Emergency Management (OREM), were willing to partner with us to support the food needs in Jackson County and several other Oregon counties. This relationship has been fruitful for RFU. Without that support, our communities would suffer. They partnered with us to lower barriers, show gratitude, serve with joy, and act to support both emergency relief and community resilience.
We have been able to support our counties in ways we never imagined. We now have our own 501(c)(3) nonprofit status and are able to offer many different programs. Since October, we have been in collaboration with Fry Family Farm to provide produce for a new outreach program - Neighbors Unite / Vecidos Unidos - a no-cost no-barrier mobile farmers market serving three communities in Southern Oregon every week. In just 10 weeks, we distributed fresh organic produce, fresh meat, and eggs to more than 11,000 families. We are being supported in expanding these efforts by Jackson Care Connect and AllCare Health. Since November, we have been providing a menu of regular meals, fresh produce, shelf-stable foods, and solidarity cards to fire-affected residents sheltered in hotels through a collaboration with Rogue Community Health. We have rebuilt our team and shifted our organization to meet the changing needs of a recovery that has no end in sight.
We are honored to be able to carry these programs forward into 2023. We now have the capacity to partner with others to confront the very real issue of food insecurity. We have an opportunity to positively affect our neighbors. The way we (RFU) approach this is with consistency. We show up. We show up when we say we will, every single time. We have said we will continue to show up, and we do. We offer community, we listen, we remember each other, and we bring beautiful food. We have altered our offerings many times, and anticipate continuing to do so, depending on the needs and desires of those we are in service to. Certainly, RFU is first and foremost here to serve the community. We are here to fuel, while people heal.
We are so incredibly lucky to be in this world with so many organizations that are here to advocate for change. You can learn more about what we do now by visiting our newly re-imagined website at roguefoodunites.org. As we move forward in recovery, we truly hope to partner with many of you to support more people in need. We have all collectively made an impact. I believe we can continue to do that. There is always a yes answer.
In solidarity,
Amber Ferguson
CEO / Executive Director
