Feed Your Soul Pop Up
This special curated event brings together business owners, farmers, chefs, and community members who are passionate about food and food justice.
This event asks you to reimagine your relationship with food and invites you to consider engaging with food as a form of self-care and medicine that can help you create a deeper understanding and connection with your inner self.
Feed Your Soul Pop Up will have speakers, tastings, & much more! We are excited to have you join us for this fun & exploratory event!
Featured Speakers:
RUDY JIMENEZ | Farmer/Owner of Green Thumb Farms
Growing up in Salinas, Rudy was inspired by his father Rodolfo, who had been working on a conventional farm for 30 years. Rudy turned the wealth of experience from his dad and his entrepreneurship skills and funded Green Thumb Farms in 2015.
Rudy made a decision to stay in agriculture, but to do it in a way that aligns with his values. He now runs Green Thumb Farms, a four-acre farm in San Juan Bautista.
In addition Rudy gives back to his community by offering wellness and health educational workshops via Urban Arts Collaborative where Healthy food is the medium and the message, integrate nutrition and wellness education, trips to his farm, and special workshops in creating living food mandalas to teach both care for self and stewardship of the land serving youth ages 13 to 24, formerly incarcerated youth, migrant youth, and parents, promote healthy eating habits, lift up food production and preparation as a form of artistic expression, and develop advocacy for environmental, economic, and social justice.
Chris Renfro | Co-founder, 280 Project (a non-profit based in San Francisco, CA)
In 2019, Chris Renfro co-founded the 280 Project, with his partner, Jannea Tschirch located at Alemany Farms, one of the largest community gardens in San Francisco which has San Francisco’s only urban vineyard, nestled between 101/280 freeways, Alemany apartments, and the Bayview and affluent Bernal Heights neighborhoods in San Francisco. While living in some of the nicest neighborhoods in the city as a Black man and Chris’s experience working in fine dining hospitality positions in San Francisco, it was very hard to ignore the issues of inequality around my passions and how these issues affected people of color living in the community.
Chris is the vineyard manager at Alemany Farms. A paid viticulture apprenticeship program is managed jointly between him and Rita Manzana, 280 Project's program director, (in partnership with Alemany Farms, UC Davis, and award-winning winemaker, Steve Matthiasson) to teach BIPOC individuals about viticulture, connecting local communities to farming as a way to combat food insecurity as well as using viticulture education and field training as a way to close the diversity and equity gap and provide more access for BIPOC communities to career opportunities in the wine industry.
Tastings & Food Education
Sabrina Balera | Community Well Resident Chef & Food As Medicine Practitioner
Bernadette Aguirre | Herbalist & Founder of INA Botanicals
Masayakape | Pinay - Owned Coffee Cart Bringing Kapwa Together over Specialty Kapé