Australian Fair Food Forum

Avoiding burnout in community food enterprises

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#1

In the Shared Learning Day that Open Food Network ran at the end of 2017, there was a common thread of people talking about burnout - how those leading community food enterprises have coped with burnout or avoided it, how to look after staff and volunteers, etc.

I’d be interested in if anyone has any good resources to share on this topic. Some of the stuff I’ve read on this topic seems pretty naff when I think of the load on some fair food folks’ plates! But, some resources do seem more useful and realistic :slight_smile: particularly those that I’ve seen on activist sites.

The Plan to Thrive website is an Australian site for activist health and wellbeing, they have a useful resource page: http://plantothrive.net.au/resources/
Including a link to a good thread on New Tactics about self-care: https://www.newtactics.org/conversation/self-care-activists-sustaining-your-most-valuable-resource

Do others have useful resources they’d recommend?

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#2

I also think @edigrocer have done a great job of placing work/life balance at the centre of their structure with the goal of avoiding burnout. They talk about it a bit in this case study: https://openfoodnetwork.org/au/learn/story/edithvale-community-greengrocer-edigrocer-case-study/

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#3

Thanks for kudos @Jen! We definitely strive to have a good balance… just because we have left the shop doesn’t mean work ideas are out of our heads though. That’s something we need to work on!

Beach side living helps though, and we just welcomed two new locals to the team :slight_smile:

Here’s a resource Jono’s been reading up on about wellbeing at a radial organisation level: https://loomio.coop/looking_after_people.html

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#4

Hi there…

I am from across the ditch in Christchurch, New Zealand…hopefully that’s okay :slight_smile:

I have just taken a position of Network Manager for a network of food initiatives in our city called Food Resilience Network, and also run a community food initiative named Roimata Food Commons.

This is one of my core issues that I want to research and affect change in our city…how do we create change and look after ourselves at the same time? How do we motivate long term volunteer engagement in our community projects?

I am sorry that I am not offering anything solutions at this stage, but I just wanted to connect with this conversation and hopefully add to it very soon?!?!?

Much love to all,

Michael

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#5

Great examples here! From a more established enterprise viewpoint, this can be a hard one to manage and maintain. Food Connect was originally designed to not take on volunteers as we’re about rewarding effort fairly. We also decided to only deliver to customers three days a week. Which means Monday is prep day and Friday is a day off for everyone! Three day weekends are THE BEST! Mindy you, you have to be disciplined to keep it that way and we fail at that regularly :wink: