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Our Proposition – Strategies and Priorities – History – Organizational Structure – Leadership
Our Proposition
Enterprises, social programs and governance protocols that tap #NutrientValueChains and help stimulate Nourishment Economies provide tremendous value for communities, businesses, and governments interested in the welfare of people and the environment, now and into the future. In various forms they reduce pollution, provide employment, increase resilience against environmental and social risks, support and sometimes rejuvenate cultures, improve health and wellness through more nutritious and stable food supplies, increase basic food security, help stabilize watersheds, regenerate soils for both agriculture and biodiversity, and more.
This wide array of benefits characterizes the enterprises, programs and protocols Nourishn works with. Often originating through the efforts of persistent social entrepreneurs, they are powerful specifically because they cross lines between traditional disciplines (e.g. healthcare, food, farming, and environment), and because they often combine scientific, cultural, and financial/economic drivers, mobilizing whole communities in the process.
The Nourishn professional team works alongside a global network of affiliated social entrepreneurs, communities, scientists, and others to help trigger and spread Nourishment Economies in various parts of the world.
Nourishn manages and implements projects and initiatives directly, under the leadership of David Strelneck and other team members (below), and coordinates and collaborates with various Nourishment Economies Coalition members in others.
Strategies and Priorities
Nourishn taps this pool of relationships, examples and approaches, data, and insights — and the patterns of action and results our collaborations have identified — in formulating new initiatives and in partnering with communities, governments, and private companies tackle new challenges.
Four top-level strategies guide Nourishn:
1. Crafting and launching new initiatives or enterprises by combining relevant approaches, tools and lessons in new actions and places; by matching complementary enterprisers with other entrepreneurial thinkers and doers in new places or situations (often via a focused “Action Summit” format); and by continuing to identify, support, and learn from emerging social entrepreneurs around the world, connecting them when appropriate with other systems-change support networks and resources, and further informing our own portfolio of models, insights and partnerships.
2. Developing new talent in society, oriented around locally-identified benefits (i.e. #NutrientValueChains) of stimulating nourishment-cycles, and local approaches for triggering those into action. Three approaches we’ve had success with include (a) field experience and immersion training with leading social innovators and communities who are already acting on these opportunities; (b) helping develop and spread Schools that Nourish insights and tools across countries, often in collaboration with Ashoka’s global Changemaker Schools initiative; and (c) including young people and local enterprisers from new communities in the “Action Summits” with groups of leading social entrepreneurs mentioned above.
3. Supporting development of effective governance protocols, with public and private institutions in a diversity of societies (from Western-styled governments to tribal councils or chiefs), so that the nourishment principle orients future decisions on a consistent basis.
4. Supporting new nutritional metrics and measurement approaches to drive markets, reflecting the evolving science of nutrient spectrum and bioavailability in our health, foods, and soils, so that communities, consumers, policymakers and companies across a range of sectors begin to monitor, learn, and drive demand for products that truly nourish both people and the land.
History
Nourishn launched as an independent organization in 2016. Everyone affiliated with Nourishn met over the past decade, across a wide range of countries, through entrepreneurial enterprises and projects, events, or research activities focused on several topics: innovations affecting rural communities; the relationship between human wellness, nutrition, agriculture and the environment; regenerative economic development; and social entrepreneurs as drivers of systemic change in society.
Examples include staff and leading social entrepreneurs of Ashoka’s six-year initiative to identify innovators and patterns of action in Rural Innovation and Farming; organizers of the U.S. Agricultural Innovation Prize; participants in the annual Borlaug Dialogue; indigenous representatives from the Indigenous Terra Madre; and others.
The patterns and connections identified through these activities brought the Nourishment Economies and #NutrientValueChains frame of reference into clear focus. For more information see the Resources section of this web site.
Organizational Structure
Nourishn is a social enterprise designed to act flexibly, nimbly, and decisively when pursuing our mission across a wide range of initiatives and countries.
With these goals in mind, Nourishn is headquartered in the United States, where it is organized under U.S. law as an S Corporation or “S-Corp.” As such, Nourishn receives direct payment from some funders to support our initiatives and operations, and also to provide advisory or analytic or other direct services in line with our mission. Nourishn also raises and receives grants from philanthropic foundations, either through direct payment or through Fiscal Sponsorship partnership with various not-for-profit members in the Nourishment Economies Coalition, depending on the nature and location of a particular project or funder.
Individuals wishing to make tax-deductible donations should contact Nourishn leadership for guidance on the process. (Thank you!)
Nourishn commits 100% of its revenue from all sources to furthering its mission of helping spark and spread cycles of biological, cultural and economic vitality in society.
David Strelneck leads Nourishn , including six staff and consultants supporting mission-level programs and projects with the global Nourishment Economies Coalition and others.
A lifelong instigator of environment-and-livelihood initiatives, David founded Nourishn in 2016 to build on momentum in the pace of innovations he was seeing at the overlap health, food, farming, and the natural environment. Among previous enterprises, David helped lead Ashoka’s global Environmental Innovations Initiative and its program on Rural Innovation and Farming for 12 years, with leading social entrepreneurs in Latin America, North America, Africa, Southeast Asia, and Western Europe; he was Managing Director and Chief Operating Officer of the public-issues Internet firm Forum One Communications, creating web-based tools for environment and development organizations and governments in the early days of the world wide web; he led the ICF International team designing chemical pollution reduction approaches with small industry, government and United Nations and World Bank agencies in 26 developing countries; and he has helped create and lead other independent projects ranging from watershed conservation in California to ocean fisheries in Maine. David holds degrees in political science from Stanford University and in public policy from Harvard University, and a diploma from Lee Vining High School in his tiny hometown in the mountains of California USA.
Ninette Irabaruta is Nourishn ’s Global Associate, coordinating learning and research, public communications, and project management among nourishment-cycle enterprisers and other collaborators worldwide.
Ninette previously supported teams and projects of the Maine Community Foundation; research and outreach with the Mental Health & Racial Equity project at the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University; and development of workshops to help cultivate young talent in U.S. immigrant and underserved communities on leadership, cross-cultural communication, social justice, and civic engagement. Ninette is a native of Burundi in Central Africa and moved to the United States in 2012, escaping political unrest and pursuing her college education. Ninette holds degrees in political science from St. Joseph’s College of Maine and in sustainable international development from the Heller School for Social Policy and Management at Brandeis University, and a diploma from Lycée de l’Humanité in Bujumbura, Burundi.
Andrea Sivak is a Science-and-Economics Analyst at Nourishn , managing research and data about the ecological and social benefits of nutrient cycles between people and land. Andrea also helps manage Nourishn ’s food quality marketplace initiative with various partners.
Andrea previously provided financial and accounting support to five research centers of the University of Michigan’s Institute for Social Research; volunteered at an academic enrichment program for low-income youth in San Francisco, California, USA; and worked as a personal health and fitness trainer. She holds degrees in economics and psychology from Northwestern University and in Sports Management from the University of Michigan, and a diploma from Greenhills High School in Michigan USA.