Navigator Community Guidelines

Community Food Navigator Purpose

Community Food Navigator App is a collaborative hub for knowledge and resource sharing. A digital tool created by and for growers and local food organizers to strengthen connections and increase visibility and connection to information, resources, and knowledge.

The Community Food Navigator’s mission is to expand food sovereignty—particularly in Black, Brown, and Indigenous communities—by engaging people; strengthening connections and collaboration; telling more truthful stories about the Chicago food system; and redistributing power.

Our Community Practices

The Navigator is an invitation to be humans in community together, building the good of our food systems and neighborhoods.

This is a place to meet new people, and work across lines of difference in the pursuit of our common purpose. With new relationships and connections comes great opportunities and, sometimes, significant challenges to community building and collaboration.

We have learned that the following commitments can help us to collaborate across the network more effectively. All members are invited to hold these commitments as we build connections, explore projects, and learn together:

• Build Community and Collective Care – We all work to ensure the Community Food Navigator’s online and offline communal spaces share a spirit of support, kindness, mutual accountability, and curiosity.
• Share Dignity and Respect – We engage each other with dignity and respect as we seek to learn together, and explore our own areas for growth and creativity. 
• Offer Useful Info; Honor Your Sources – This digital space is meant to make work easier and more meaningful through collective knowledge accumulated and shared by and with growers, local food mobilizers, and educators. 

Please see our next section on how we live our values for more specific guidance on how to live these commitments at the Navigator.

 

How we live these community practices

Each member of Community Food Navigator is a valued steward of our space and accountable to our values. We wanted to offer insights of what we’ve learned so far about how to steward our community. Please reach out to our team to add your own reflections to this section – navi@communityfoodnavigator.org. 

Build Community and Collective Care – We all work to ensure the Community Food Navigator’s online and offline communal spaces share a spirit of support, kindness, mutual accountability, and curiosity.

In our initial work within Community Food Navigator, we have learned about important aspects of collective care on our platform, we invite you to explore:

• Deeply listening
• Meeting new people, this is an opportunity to break down silos or distance between us and spark new partnerships
• Nurturing reciprocity in our connections, find resources and share your insights and knowledge with others
• Investing time and energy in building trust – not taking it for granted, not assuming how trust needs to be built. We encourage active engagement in building trust together on the platform. 
• Leading with and for racial justice and inclusivity in food systems
• Being mindful of our language in all areas – and particularly in the use of gender neutral language, and respectful use of pronouns
• Sharing skills and asking for support – we encourage you to share your challenges, your insights, and ask for support
• Making space, and taking space – We provide the space to amplify the voices that have been historically marginalized.

Note: This is not an exhaustive list, and we will continue to add to it as our work evolves. Contact us if you have other insights to share – navi@communityfoodnavigator.org.

Share Dignity and Respect – We engage each other with dignity and respect as we seek to learn together, and explore our own areas for growth and creativity. 

We don’t expect everyone to agree on how to achieve food justice and equity or even on the definitions of all terms. We do expect that this is a space where various perspectives and approaches are welcome and discourse is encouraged. Fostering appropriate and thoughtful digital spaces and connections is the work of each of us. We encourage members to cultivate relational safety through respectful interactions, and seeing, hearing and valuing each other. 

We are committed to accountability in unsafe situations, and have developed the moderation process below to address when you need support living these commitments in our community, or when we need to address a breach of our values and commitments.

Offer Useful Info; Honor Your Sources – This digital space is meant to make work easier and more meaningful through collective knowledge accumulated and shared by and with growers, local food mobilizers, and educators. 

We encourage you to share Information that is relevant and appropriate to forward diverse perspectives and skills within the food community. All members are encouraged to accurately cite their sources and share gratitude and respect with their teachers, and sources of inspiration and knowledge. This is particularly important in a context where the knowledge and creativity of BIPOC communities has been exploited, stolen, or used for the material gain of others. 

 

Connect with Us for Community Building Support

Community Food Navigator staff and the Community Food Navigator Digital Steward Pod are here to support community building across the network. The Digital Steward Pod (DSP) is intentionally stewarded by a rotating group of Digital Stewards, reflective of the digital community. The DSP gathers to discuss and co-create Moderation and Community Practices, Digital Community Building, and technology updates and feedback. When moderation is needed, members will gather and create paths forward. Moderation of the Community Food Navigator App is intended to honor our collective humanity and imperfections while holding each other accountable. While we hope harm is infrequent, as users encounter discomfort, misuse, or harm we seek to lean into conflict as an opportunity for growth and to create modes for community-generated solutions to conflict. 

 

For more information about the Digital Steward Pod or to be considered for participation please email navi@communityfoodnavigator.org.

To establish community practices in your App Community Groups, or to discuss how to moderate your own App Community Groups on the platforms, please email navi@communityfoodnavigator.org.

For questions about our purpose, values, community practices, or stewardship or to receive support in living these values and commitments in the community, please email navi@communityfoodnavigator.org.

If you are experiencing, have experienced, or witnessed concerns, questions or violations of our values, community practices or stewardship guidance, please email navi@communityfoodnavigator.org. Staff will respond within 48 business hours. Staff will determine the supports and interventions needed on a case by case basis, based upon our community commitments and stewardship guidance. If immediate action is determined to be necessary, a post may be temporarily disabled until further review. When necessary, staff will convene the Community Food Navigator DSP.

When we seek moderation from staff or the Community Food Navigator moderation council

As we build community and collective care, we value accountability in our interactions. 

This section provides further clarity and detail on the behaviors that are unacceptable in our community, and that are a breach of our values and community commitments. 

Community Food Navigator staff and the Community Food Navigator moderation council have the right to remove any member of the network from the platform for a breach of our values. The list below provides examples of some of these behaviors that can be grounds for intervention from staff or the DSP, or removal from the platform.

• Hateful speech or behavior
• Abusive behavior
• Fake Engagement
• Impersonation

For more information see our terms and conditions and privacy policy.