Food Innovation — Baltimore & Beyond
Find out about innovations happening around food in Baltimore and in the Netherlands that will make our world more sustainable, improve access to nutritious food, and provide individuals & startups the means to make a living through healthy food. This event will leave you feeling inspired about our future!
PROGRAM
6:00pm - Mingle, enjoy wine and Dutch beer, and sample locally produced hors d’oeuvres catered by City Seeds, a local social enterprise dedicated to creating good jobs in the culinary industry.
6:30pm - Presentations (Baltimore Food Hub; Innovations from the Netherlands)
7:15-8:00pm - Networking
ABOUT THE EVENT
**This event is now over - check out the photos of the event on the Baltimore-Rotterdam Facebook page. **
The production and distribution of food intersects with some of the most critical issues of our time: health and nutrition, poverty, energy, climate change, biodiversity, water, and labor. The world’s dominant food and agriculture systems are fraught by complex and urgent challenges, including obesity, environmental degradation and emissions from farming activities, labor injustices, and inequities in distribution of farm land and food access. Many initiatives and efforts have emerged in recent years, as attempts to address these persistent food-related problems, from local to global levels.
At this event we’ll showcase some local and global innovations to solve some of these critical issues. Innovations that address challenges in food systems, improve food security and equitable access to nutritious food, and promote sustainability. Organizations that provide budding local food entrepreneurs with skills and resources like kitchen incubators and farmland, so that they can make a living in the food industry. You'll hear about interesting ventures happening in Baltimore and in Netherlands.
This event is being held during Baltimore Innovation Week (BIW) and Natural Products Expo East in Baltimore. BIW is a weeklong celebration of technology and innovation in Baltimore. The Expo is a yearly event that includes entrepreneurs launching innovative healthy, organic products.
SPEAKERS
China Boak Terrell, CEO of American Communities Trust, the developer of the new Baltimore Food Hub and a member of Impact Hub Baltimore
China Boak Terrell will talk about the Baltimore Food Hub. Baltimore Food Hub promotes local and regional foods in Baltimore City. It is growing the food innovation economy by offering entrepreneurs and food businesses resources to scale their mission.
A 3.5-acre campus of food ventures in East Baltimore, the Baltimore Food Hub will bring new life to a disinvested neighborhood while providing opportunities for microenterprise, job creation, and community education. The campus will cluster synergistic uses to capitalize on the potential of the food industry to foster entrepreneurship and economic opportunity. It will be a place where entrepreneurs can collaborate, food businesses can scale up, and neighbors can learn what it takes to make a career in the kitchen.
Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister City Committee
Members of the committee will talk about some interesting initiatives happening in Rotterdam in the Netherlands.
PARTICIPANTS
Baltimore Food Hub - growing Baltimore’s food innovation economy by offering entrepreneurs and food businesses resources to scale their mission
City Seeds - Baltimore organization dedicated to creating good jobs in the culinary industry
The Stroopie Co. - Dutch style stroopwafels from a Lancaster company that provides meaningful employment to refugees
Sanorice - Netherlands company producing organic and fair trade rice and corn cakes
Say Yes to No - Bread chips snacks from the Netherlands, including Dutch Gouda flavored chips
FoodBridge - A solution that connects food distributors with excess food to local non profits in need of food
Tony's Chocolonely - Netherlands company producing fair trade chocolate made without slave labor
And a big thanks to Rotterdam Partners for their help with logistics for this event
ORGANIZERS
Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister City Committee (BRSCC)
Baltimore and Rotterdam’s Sister City relationship was established by the mayors of Baltimore, Maryland and Rotterdam, The Netherlands in 1985. The Baltimore-Rotterdam Sister City Committee (BRSCC) is a non-profit, volunteer-run committee based in Baltimore that conducts the sister city affairs. We facilitate mutual exchanges and understanding between the citizens of both cities. We are a member of Baltimore Sister Cities, Inc.
Netherlands America Chamber of Commerce for the Washington Metro region (NACCWM)
NACCWM is a non-profit, non-governmental, non-political member based networking organization for Dutch and American businesses and individuals. The NACCWM encourages and facilitates the transaction of business between both countries and promotes the interests of its members. We cover an area from Richmond, Virginia to Baltimore, Maryland.
Impact Hub Baltimore
Impact Hub is part innovation lab, part coworking space, part civic forum. Our members are a vibrant, diverse and growing community of innovators and entrepreneurs dedicated to driving positive change in Baltimore and beyond. We provide an inclusive, inspiring, and functional space that connects our members to the ideas, resources, and people they need to make tangible social impact. We also serve as a gathering place for the global movement towards stronger cities and a new economy.
CATERER
City Seeds
City Seeds, a Humanim Social Enterprise, is dedicated to creating good jobs in the culinary industry. Passionate about food and driven to transform lives, we secretly hope to be the next big thing to Baltimore since Old Bay.
City Seeds will be the first tenant in the new Baltimore Food Hub.
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