We are very proud of our Board Member Wendy Sibbison, who won the Community Catalyst Award at Greenfield Community College’s annual “Building Bridges and Belonging” dinner on March 1. Wendy was inspired to rally Co-op member-owners and Board members to raise $10,000 for GCC’s Corner Market Food Pantry, which provides food for currently enrolled students and employees, after reading a GCC student’s My Turn in The Recorder that discussed the impact of food insecurity on students. Wendy is a shining example of how to put cooperative principles into practice! Below are Wendy’s remarks from the awards ceremony.
We’re here tonight to support GCC’s Impact Fund. As far as I’m concerned GCC’s most crucial impact right now is as a bulwark against authoritarianism. Over and over, studies show that higher education builds that life-changing bulwark, especially in times of crisis. Now for my remarks about this lovely award, for which I am humbly grateful.
I have seen firsthand GCC’s life-changing impact. In the early ’70s, as an urban transplant to Franklin County, I met Becky who, 50 years later, is still my best friend. Just so you know, our introduction to GCC was earning a few bucks posing nude for a photography class down by the tracks off Arch Street. A little later, when I was in law school, GCC gave Becky a full scholarship, then helped her get a full ride to Amherst College in the first class accepting women, after which she went on to earn her MSW at Smith. GCC changed Becky’s life, and she blossomed into a life-changing family therapist and political activist.
Last April I read a Recorder column by Mike Hannigan, a 42-year-old custodian who enrolled in GCC when Massachusetts made community college free and opened the door to changing more lives. Mike’s article taught me about food insecurity in his cohort – that 44% of public university and community college students face hunger every day. He wrote, “Our campus food pantry is consistently packed. It’s one of the only reasons some students are able to stay in school.”
I had just been elected to the Board of the Franklin Community Co-op, a member-owned business grounded in core values, which include supporting local farms, supporting community, caring about human and environmental health, and caring about economic justice. I put down the paper and right then decided to ask our membership to donate money to help GCC buy food for its students. Cyndi Rebelo, who runs the food pantry, and Alexis Paige, who runs the foundation, were gung-ho, and our member-owners quickly rose to the occasion. Sitting at our Co-op tables over there are just a few of them, and this honor is as much theirs as mine. This year – and I hope for years to come – Co-op members will renew their support to help stock GCC’s Corner Market’s shelves.
GCC and Green Fields Market now have a delightful connection, and I dream of more down the road. Most of you know that the Co-op plans to expand into Wilson’s. That plan includes a stand-alone community room and teaching kitchen. My fantasy is that the Co-op and GCC will work together on cooking and nutrition classes for students in our teaching kitchen, showing how to make healthy, delicious meals with food from the Corner Market.
By the time this happens, I expect Mike Hannigan will have moved onward and upward in the life-changing trajectory he started at GCC. Already, his one thoughtful essay set in motion a new and nourishing community partnership that I hope will last a long time. To borrow Humphrey Bogart’s lines at the end of Casablanca, in closing I say, “GCC, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship.”
Read an article about the “Building Bridges and Belonging” event at The Recorder here.