Several of our earlier working groups had essentially put themselves out of their jobs by doing such great work:

• The Sustainable Consumers Group put full energy into developing the Waterbury Farmer’s Market and reconstituting a Farmer’s Market Board of Directors.  Today's Farmer's Market (an organization that is totally independent of the Food Council) is more vibrant, more exciting and better attended
• TBPS and CBMS have exciting new local food initiatives taking place within the schools at the production, consumption and curriculum levels...  a lot of the energy for this evolved out of work begun by the Food Council's founding Schools Group. 
• The Gardeners' Collaborative Group worked to educate non-commercial food growers by sharing skills and information -- but found it hard to maintain momentum once their own gardens came into full production mode. 

Looking ahead
The second meeting of the new Food Connections group will take place on Thursday, December 9th at 7pm in the Thatcher Brook Primary School library (2nd floor, at the top of the central stairway).  This group encompasses projects on education/schools, gardening, consumers, and other related topics.  The agenda for the 12/9 meeting includes discussion of eight projects, some existing/ongoing and some new.  They are:

• Waterbury Record Bi-weekly Column
• Gardeners' Collaborative
• Farmers' Market
• Farm-to-School Projects
• Downtown Market Support (RJ's)
• WDFC Blog
• Food Film Series
• School Composting Project
• RJ's Friendly Market support
  

If you're interested in learning more about the Food Connections group and its projects and possibly working on a project team, please attend! For more information, contact Amy.


To Be Determined
And yet, this is a list still in development!  As we have learned: bring energy, excitement and an idea -- and a project is born!