Mission
Food Empowerment Project seeks to create a more just and sustainable world by recognizing the power of one’s food choices. We encourage healthy food choices that reflect a more compassionate society by spotlighting the abuse of animals on farms, the depletion of natural resources, unfair working conditions for produce workers, and the unavailability of healthy foods in low-income areas.
By making informed choices, we can prevent injustices against animals, people, and the environment. We also work to discourage negligent corporations from pushing unhealthy foods into low-income areas and empower people to make healthier choices by growing their own fruits and vegetables. In all of our work, Food Empowerment Project seeks specifically to empower those with the fewest resources.
Food Empowerment Project is a vegan food justice organization and a registered non-profit 501(c)(3) and was founded in 2007 by lauren Ornelas. Learn more about the organization’s leadership team.
Values
In addition to the values inherent to our work, which include stances against animal exploitation, worker exploitation, slavery, and food apartheid, Food Empowerment Project acknowledges that many other social injustices exist. Our values and ethics include a strong stance against ableism, ageism, antisemitism, body shaming, casteism, classism, colonialism, homophobia, Islamophobia, racism, sexism, transphobia, and xenophobia. We are a vegan organization founded and operated by a woman of color and our staff and board also hold these values.
These values also include supporting a number of causes, such as boycotts called by farm workers and other impacted community members, as well as supporting and amplifying the voices of communities of color, those affected by sexism or harassment and bullying in the animal movement, and those who speak out against violence to human or non-human animals. We also commit our solidarity to Indigenous peoples facing ongoing displacement and lend our voice to support long-overdue reparations for impacted tribal nations.
Vision
We envision a food system free from the exploitation of humans and the environment and with equitable access to healthy, sustaining food for all communities; where non-human animals are not seen as food but as individuals with lives, personalities, friendships, and family and are free from harm and exploitation; and where workers, communities, and the environment are always protected and treated with dignity, respect, and appreciation.
Land Acknowledgement
Food Empowerment Project’s team works nationwide. Individually, we reside on yak titʸu titʸu yak tiłhini Northern Chumash Tribe, Tongva, Kizh, Conestoga-Susquehannock, Piscataway, Osage, Yuchi, Shawnee, Adena, Hopewell, Tsalaguwetiyi, and Anikituwagi territories. We recognize that this land was stolen from the original peoples of these areas. We honor, remember, and pay our respect to the elders, both past and present, who have stewarded this land for generations.