Springing Forward from Grounded Beginnings: Q1 2025 Chapter Digest
Q1 2025 Chapter Digest
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Q1 2025 Chapter Digest 📃 Click Here 📃
Hi friends,
As we head into summer, our team has been reflecting on the incredible momentum built in the first quarter of the year - a season that truly laid the foundation for everything we’re working on now. This community isn’t just growing in numbers, but in depth, reach, and heart. Across the country, students are finding each other, building real connections, and anchoring their learning in hands-on, community-rooted work that matters.
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Sponsor a Chapter Today!
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Support the Future of Food Systems → Sponsor a Chapter Today! →
Our time together in Washington DC at the start of the year was a highlight. The Student Summit wasn’t just a gathering. It was a clear reminder of what is possible when students come together across campuses with shared purpose and creativity. From career and community roundtables to panels with food systems professionals who were eager to hear from students, it felt like a space where new ideas could actually take root. People didn’t just come to talk. They came to listen, support, and build something with each other.
Beyond DC, our chapters have been active in ways that speak to the power of place-based action. In the South and Southwest, students at Trinity and Arizona State University have been reconnecting to the soil through volunteer days at local gardens and small farms. They’re not only helping grow food, but also learning from community partners who are deeply invested in health, justice, and culture.
In the Midwest, the University of Illinois chapter explored the Common Ground Co-op, gaining a firsthand look at how cooperative models support local growers and offer students insight into food systems transformation.
We’re thrilled to share that Universidad Autónoma de Baja California (UABC) was recently awarded a COIL grant for a binational course in collaboration with UC Berkeley, launching in Fall 2025. This marks a groundbreaking step toward integrating cross-border academic exchange into our network. It’s more than a course - it’s a platform for long-term partnership and deeper regional impact, creating a space where students from both sides of the border can learn together, challenge each other, and co-create new visions for food system transformation.
We’re currently at 90 chapters, with an 11 percent growth this quarter. That number matters, but what matters more is how this network is evolving. Eighty percent of our chapter leaders are women, and their work reflects values of inclusion, care, and grounded leadership. This isn’t just about growing a network. It’s about creating a community of action that reflects the diversity and energy of the next generation.
We’ve seen students in Denver volunteer at SAME Café, where meals are accessible to all regardless of ability to pay. In Davis, students hosted a farm-to-table dinner with seasonal ingredients from their campus farm, showing how food can bring people together in nourishing, joyful ways. There’s been tree planting, riparian restoration, and cooking workshops. Each of these actions is a piece of something larger.
Thank you for being part of this. Whether you’re a student, a faculty member, or a partner who believes in this work, you’re helping create a future that is rooted in care, connection, and community.
Support the Future of Food Systems
If you’ve been inspired by the stories in this newsletter, consider sponsoring a student or a student chapter.
A gift of just $25/month helps sponsor a student - supporting their access to transformative gatherings, hands-on learning experiences, and leadership development.
A $50/month donation helps sponsor an entire student chapter - providing resources to host events, collaborate with community partners, and lead campus-wide food justice initiatives.
This isn’t just a donation - it’s an investment in the next generation of food system leaders, rooted in care, connection, and action. As a token of our gratitude for your monthly support, we’ll send you a special piece of Plant Futures merch, a small reminder that you're part of this growing movement.
