🌻 Get to Know the Growers 🌻
Hope’s Harvest RI partners with various farms to glean crops, purchase surplus produce, and contract seasonally to grow for hunger relief. We wanted to highlight these farms so our audience and volunteers can get to know the growers and the land a little better!
We will be gathering virtually to get to know one of our partner farms, Movement Ground, and the people behind the harvest. You’ll get to hear a little bit about what we’re up to this season and what we’re getting ready for! We’ll have time for introductions, discussion on who they are, how they started farming, the land that they grow on, photo sharing, and end with Q&A.
Coincidentally, this event will be held at an ideal time to observe “happy hour”! Feel free to bring your own drinks and snacks 🙂
🌻 About the Farmers 🌻
Kohei Ishihara – Founder and Director
A native of Maryland, Kohei first moved to Rhode Island to attend Brown University. Upon graduating, he co-founded Providence Youth Student Movement (PRYSM), a youth development and community organizing agency, which works to empower and educate Southeast Asian youth.
After 10 years leading PRYSM, and a brief time living in California, Kohei started taking classes and learning everything he could about farming. In 2013, Kohei moved back to Massachusetts and began working with Cooks Valley Farm in Wrentham and Freedom Food Farm in Raynham. Soon there after he founded Movement Ground Farm on a property in Berkley, MA after graduating from New Entry’s Farm Business Planning Course.
Keely Curliss – Farm Manager
Keely is a queer Nipmuc farmer, youth worker and community organizer who grew up in Cambridge and lived most of her adult life in Boston. Keely has committed the last 13 seasons to growing and cultivating vegetables, flowers, herbs and medicines in spaces of all sizes, from her small second floor back porch to a 31 acre farm operation and many farms between.
When not tending to plants and land, Keely can be found organizing as a part of the leadership team of Rooted in Community, a national network of youth, food and environmental justice organizations and with the board of trustees for the Northeastern Farmers of Color (NEFOC) land trust. Keely is also a member of Eastern Woodlands Rematriation Collective, an intertribal collective of womxn and two spirit people who are working with their communities to restore traditional life ways, food ways and uplift rematriation.
