Food Sovereignty Campaign: Five Workshops That Built Community Power

Bandung, May 19 - July 30, 2025 — On a humid May morning in Bandung, fifty people gathered in a community hall with a shared question: "Why is it so hard to put food on the table in a city surrounded by farmland?"

Participants at the first Food Sovereignty Campaign workshop, May 19, 2025

The Food Sovereignty Campaign wasn't looking for simple answers. Over five workshops spanning three months, participants from three marginalized communities—urban poor youth, economically vulnerable women, and persons with disabilities—embarked on a journey from individual frustration to collective action.

May 19, 2025: Finding Common Ground

Workshop 1 brought together people who rarely occupy the same spaces. There were street vendors who wake at 4 AM to source vegetables, youth with physical disabilities navigating inaccessible markets, and women balancing informal work with household food provisioning.

The icebreaker activity—"Two Facts and One Lie" about personal food experiences—immediately surfaced shared struggles. One participant's "lie" was "I've never gone to bed hungry"—except it wasn't a lie, sparking a painful but necessary conversation about food insecurity in the shadows of Bandung's affluence.

Facilitators introduced the seven pillars of food sovereignty using visual aids designed for accessibility. Large-font posters, tactile models of food systems, and verbal descriptions ensured participants with varying abilities could engage fully.

When asked what food sovereignty meant to them, responses revealed the lived dimensions of an academic concept:

"It means not having to choose between paying rent and buying vegetables."

"It means markets where I can actually enter with my wheelchair."

"It means growing food in our neighborhood instead of depending on supermarkets we can't afford."

Small group discussions mixed participants across community identities. This strategic facilitation choice was deliberate—building solidarity requires proximity, shared storytelling, and recognizing common interests across difference.

Workshop 2: Mapping Resources and Building Trust

The second workshop, held in early June, focused on social capital—the networks, reciprocity, and trust that enable collective action.

Participants created a community resource map covering three Bandung neighborhoods. Using markers and large paper, they plotted: vacant land suitable for urban gardens, existing informal food vendors, water access points, community meeting spaces, and organizations with relevant skills.

The map revealed hidden abundance. One neighborhood had thirteen residents with agricultural knowledge, three with carpentry skills for building raised garden beds, and a retired teacher willing to facilitate workshops. These assets had been invisible because no forum existed to make them visible.

The "support circle" exercise built interpersonal trust. Participants shared challenges they faced—difficulty accessing credit for food vending, lack of transportation to affordable markets, social isolation while managing food preparation with a disability. The group offered concrete suggestions, contacts, and sometimes just solidarity.

"I realized I'm not the only one struggling," one woman shared. "We all thought our problems were individual failures. But when you hear the same story fifty times, you realize it's structural."

By the workshop's end, participants had exchanged phone numbers and formed three WhatsApp groups organized by neighborhood. The digital infrastructure for ongoing collaboration was taking shape.

Workshop 3: Learning the Language of Rights

The third workshop introduced a new framework: food as a human right, not charity. This reframing proved transformative.

Facilitators presented Indonesia's constitutional provisions, international human rights instruments, and Bandung's own policy commitments on food security. "You're not asking for handouts," the facilitator emphasized. "You're claiming entitlements."

The advocacy skills training covered practical tactics: How to write a petition. How to speak at a public hearing without formal education credentials. How to build coalitions across issue areas. How to use social media for advocacy while protecting safety.

Role-playing exercises prepared participants for real-world advocacy. Groups received scenarios—lobbying for wheelchair-accessible food retail spaces, advocating for subsidies for person-with-disability-owned food enterprises, demanding urban agriculture zoning reforms—and presented mock advocacy presentations.

The nervous laughter during role-plays revealed how unfamiliar these tactics were. But by the third round, participants were crafting sophisticated arguments, citing legal frameworks, and demonstrating confident public speaking.

One participant with a speech impairment used text-to-speech technology to deliver her advocacy pitch. The room erupted in applause, recognizing both her message and the demonstration that disability need not silence one's voice.

July 15, 2025: Workshops 4 & 5—From Skills to Solidarity

The final two workshops, held on consecutive days in late July, combined practical skills training with collective action planning.

Participants learn urban gardening techniques during Workshops 4 & 5, July 30, 2025

Workshop 4 taught hands-on urban agriculture: container gardening for small spaces, vertical growing systems, composting techniques, and seed saving. Participants practiced building simple wicking bed systems using recycled materials—buckets, pipes, and cloth strips.

The facilitator emphasized low-cost, accessible methods. "Food sovereignty doesn't require expensive infrastructure," she explained while demonstrating a vertical herb garden made from plastic bottles. "It requires knowledge and collective effort."

The cooperative formation session introduced participants to legal structures for community food enterprises. Several groups expressed interest in forming buying cooperatives to negotiate bulk prices with farmers, reducing costs by 20-30% compared to retail.

Workshop 5 culminated in collective action planning. Mixed groups developed concrete campaigns addressing shared priorities:

Campaign 1: Accessible Markets Initiative
Target: Mandate wheelchair accessibility in new and renovated traditional markets.
Strategy: Petition city council, partner with disability rights organizations, organize "access audits" of existing markets documented with photos and videos.

Campaign 2: Urban Agriculture Legalization
Target: Create zoning provisions allowing food production on vacant public land.
Strategy: Pilot projects demonstrating community benefits, media outreach highlighting successful models, alliance-building with environmental NGOs.

Campaign 3: Food Vendor Support Program
Target: Secure microfinance and business development services for informal food entrepreneurs.
Strategy: Document economic contributions of informal food sector, present alternatives to punitive vendor policies, propose public-private partnership models.

Each campaign identified short-term actions (petition drafting, stakeholder meetings), medium-term goals (pilot project implementation), and long-term vision (policy adoption and funding allocation).

The Power of Facilitation

What made these workshops transformative wasn't just content—it was process. Facilitators trained in disability-inclusive pedagogy created space for multiple forms of participation. Those uncomfortable with verbal contribution could write on cards. Visuals complemented oral content. Frequent breaks accommodated varied stamina levels.

The Facilitator Guide developed by Sinergantara documented these methods, making the model replicable. It emphasized: "Participation isn't just showing up. It's shaping agendas, speaking on one's own terms, and seeing your contributions valued."

Participant feedback from the first workshop shaped subsequent sessions. When several noted that afternoon sessions conflicted with childcare responsibilities, later workshops shifted to morning schedules. When participants requested more practical skills, Workshop 4 expanded the hands-on component.

This adaptive approach modeled democratic practice—listening, responding, sharing power. It was food sovereignty pedagogy embodied.

Measuring Impact: Beyond Attendance

Outcome harvesting conducted in August revealed changes beyond the workshops themselves. Forty-three of fifty participants (86%) reported taking concrete action:

• Twelve started container gardens at home or in community spaces
• Eight joined or formed food buying cooperatives
• Five participated in city council hearings on food policy
• Fifteen recruited neighbors to form urban agriculture collectives
• Six persons with disabilities advocated successfully for market accessibility improvements

The social capital metrics were equally striking. Pre-campaign, participants averaged 2.3 food-related community connections. Post-campaign, that number rose to 8.7—nearly quadrupling their food sovereignty networks.

Participants reported increased confidence in public advocacy, deeper understanding of food system drivers, and reduced feelings of isolation. As one person noted: "I went from thinking I couldn't afford vegetables to organizing a campaign to change who controls food in my city."

Challenges and Reflections

The campaign wasn't without obstacles. Some participants dropped out due to work schedule conflicts or skepticism about whether advocacy could yield results. Language barriers occasionally emerged between participants with different educational backgrounds.

Disability inclusion required ongoing attention. When the second workshop venue turned out to have inaccessible bathrooms despite assurances, facilitators had to relocate mid-session—a reminder that inclusion requires constant vigilance, not just good intentions.

The financial sustainability of participant-led initiatives remains uncertain. While workshops built skills and networks, ongoing projects require resources—seeds, tools, transportation, meeting spaces. Linking participants to existing funding streams is a priority for follow-up support.

Legacy: From Campaign to Movement

The Food Sovereignty Campaign formally concluded in July, but the work continues. Three neighborhood-based food collectives are now registered as community organizations, with regular meetings and project pipelines.

The accessibility campaign achieved an early victory: Bandung's Public Works Department committed to incorporating universal design in traditional market renovations, starting with two pilot sites.

The urban agriculture advocacy group secured permission for a demonstration garden on 500 square meters of vacant public land. The harvest will supply a community kitchen serving subsidized meals to vulnerable households.

Participants are also becoming trainers. Ten campaign participants co-facilitated a workshop for a neighboring district interested in replicating the model. The knowledge is spreading laterally, community to community.

What Food Sovereignty Looks Like

At its core, the Food Sovereignty Campaign demonstrated what food sovereignty looks like in practice. It's not just policy frameworks or agricultural techniques—it's the texture of relationships, the confidence to speak, the infrastructure of mutual aid.

It's a woman with a disability knowing which markets she can access and which vendors reserve her preferred vegetables.

It's a group of neighbors transforming a trash-filled lot into a garden, making decisions collectively about what to plant and how to share the harvest.

It's urban poor youth who once felt powerless now sitting across from city officials, articulating demands grounded in constitutional rights.

Food sovereignty, the campaign participants learned, isn't a state to achieve but a practice to cultivate—daily, collectively, with stubborn hope that a more just food system is possible.

In three Bandung neighborhoods, that practice is taking root.

The Food Sovereignty Campaign was facilitated by Sinergantara as part of the PESPA Consortium (led by Article33, funded by Yayasan Humanis dan Inovasi Sosial through the Urban Futures program). The Facilitator Guide is available for organizations interested in replicating the model.