On June 11, fifty-one people, representing 29 organizations, gathered at the St. Mary’s Boat Club for the soft launch of the JustFOOD Halifax Network.

People came from across the food system: from community gardens and food hubs, from public health offices and frontline programs, from farmers’ markets and advocacy organizations, from Black and Indigenous communities, from rural HRM and from the heart of the city. People brought decades of experience, deep relationships, and honest perspectives, and shared that generously.

The event made space for conversation, organized around the seven focus areas of the JustFOOD Action Plan (more on this below). People named what isn’t working alongside what is. Working groups began to take shape. Connections formed across organizations that hadn’t found each other before.

What we heard, loud and clear

People are craving connection.
The opportunity to talk, share, and learn alongside others doing this work is genuinely valuable and not something people get enough of.

Our commitment: We’ll keep finding ways to bring people together.

People are ready to collaborate.
This is worth celebrating. The energy in the room was generous, practical, and pointed toward action.

Our commitment: The Support Team exists to make collaboration easier by handling planning, logistics, and reporting so you’re free to dream and build.

Relationships come before structure.
We heard clearly that trust needs to come before working groups, especially in the Food Sovereignty and Equity space. The network is about people, not just the work.

Our commitment: We’re listening. We’ll ask how the network can best support relationship-building, not just task completion.

People want to understand what working groups actually look like.
The concept resonated but people wanted more concrete information before committing.

Our commitment: We’ll make this more tangible. Expect more information soon about how working groups function, what they do, and how the Support Team will make participation as light as possible.

Enthusiasm for the Network was clear: 93% of attendees valued the opportunity to connect with others and gain insight into the diverse food system work underway throughout the Region.

Why We’re Doing This

This marked a major milestone in bringing the JustFOOD Action Plan to life, taking a concrete step toward Recommendation 1a’s call to “develop a governance structure” for coordinating collective food action across the region.

Inspired by the model the Annapolis Valley Food Council has been using, we drafted a network structure where working groups come together from community, working at their own rhythm, with reps from each working group forming a Board. Our draft differs in a few ways: the Annapolis Valley Food Council is an independent non-profit, while the JustFOOD Halifax Network is a collaboration nested within the EAC.

This collaboration, this constellation of organizations working together, consists of the Ecology Action Centre, Halifax Regional Municipality, and Nova Scotia Health – Public Health. Many others have been at the table through the years, as this group has evolved from the Halifax Food Policy Alliance and, before that, the Halifax Food Charter. (There was almost a Halifax Food Council too — if you were thinking that, you’re right.)

The first step in launching a Network is to test it. We invited a small, diverse group to get feedback.

The invitation put forward that food justice work is already happening every day in the Halifax Region — in communities, by organizations, and by people who sometimes don’t know who else is working on similar goals. The JustFOOD Halifax Network hopes to change that.

The JustFOOD Halifax Network aims to strengthen the food system as a whole by:

• Making food actors visible to each other across organizational silos
• Building shared infrastructure: a common plan, shared data, resources, and collective advocacy capacity
• Amplifying collective voice
• Supporting Indigenous and African Nova Scotian & Black food sovereignty
• Implementing and bringing the JustFOOD Action Plan to life

This Network is grounded in the years of work developing and advancing the JustFOOD Halifax Action Plan, which was endorsed by Halifax Regional Council in 2023 — and in the belief that when food actors in Kjipuktuk / Halifax are connected, as a choir of voices, we grow as people, as organizations, and as a movement.

The Support Team is still growing the Network. We’re reaching out to organizations that couldn’t make it to the launch, and planning events across HRM’s Regional Districts so more people can take part. These events will help more people learn about the food work happening close to home, make new connections, and make sure the Network reflects everyone doing this work across the region.

There are a few easy ways to be part of this. If your organization’s work connects to the JustFOOD Action Plan, you can sign on as a JFAP Implementing Organization. Doing food work in your community outside of an organization? You can sign on as an Individual. Either way, it starts with a short conversation with our Support Team.  And, join our newsletter to stay in the loop on events, working groups, and everything else happening across the Network.