We Are Frontline Food System Solutionaries Reshaping the Funding Landscape

LIFE is a resource redistribution vehicle created by and for frontline food system solutionaries. Together, we are ensuring frontline food and agricultural justice organizations are well resourced to materialize real change in our fight to transform our food system towards ecological restoration, community self determination, and climate resilience

Staff Anchors

Melanie Allen — Co-Director

Melanie (she/her) has cultivated strong infrastructure to support funding and technical assistance pathways for rural and urban agrarians in the Northeast with the Black Farmer Fund, and worked nationally to lay critical donor conversations on wealth redistribution with the Decolonizing Wealth Project. Her previous work as a Fulbright fellow has brought a global lens to curating food systems in the US. Melanie is the granddaughter to Jamaican farmers who passed down practices around seed saving and food being a collective resource. Melanie studied Agriculture and Natural Resources at the University of Delaware and Masters in Sustainable International Development at Brandeis University.

Shantell Bingham — Co-Director

Shantell (she/her) has supported frontline communities across the US transition to regenerative economies and restore ecological health with the Climate Justice Alliance and led Cultivate Charlottesville’s Food Justice Network establish federal, state, municipal, and community foundation funding avenues for healthy school meals, urban agriculture, affordable housing, transportation, and localized markets. She is the great-granddaughter to North Carolina tobacco sharecroppers, railroad workers, and domestic laborers, a mother to Elijah. She's a University of Virginia Alum carrying a BA in Global Develop Studies and Master's in Public Health.

Grassroots Governance Body