Happy New Year from Food Justice NW Aurora! We’re looking forward to an exciting year of work in northwest Aurora. Check out this month’s newsletter to see what’s happening and what’s soon to come at FJNWA.

¡Feliz año nuevo de parte de Food Justice NW Aurora! Esperamos un año emocionante de trabajo en el noreste de Aurora. Echa un vistazo al boletín de este mes para ver qué está pasando y qué novedades habrá pronto en FJNWA.

To limit the size of our newsletters, our Spanish and English content will now be posted separately.  If you prefer reading our newsletter in Spanish, click here.

Para una lectura más fácil, decidimos separar las versiones en inglés y español de nuestro boletín. Si prefiere leer nuestro boletín en español, por favor acceda a nuestro sitio de boletines.  

We’re so excited to have Caitlin Trent as our new Director of Community Organizing!

As the Director of our community organizing team, her role involves strategizing, implementing, and evaluating community organizing efforts aimed at addressing systemic issues in food access, equity, and sustainability. She will lead FJNWA in strategic program development, community engagement and capacity building, and policy advocacy.

Caitlin (she/her/ella) enjoys working with grassroots organizations, campaigns and communities to build power. She is from Colorado but worked around the world for over a decade in a variety of organizations before returning to Colorado where she has worked in campaign and coalition building since 2017.

Caitlin recently worked at the Colorado Immigrant Rights Coalition (CIRC) and CIRC Action Fund as Political Director, leading a legislative campaign for SB25-276 that set national precedent for immigrant rights in the country with a coalition of over 100 organizations. She was also part of the Prop LL & MM campaign to ensure the sustainability for Healthy School Meals for All, a program she helped pass in 2022 with Prop FF as the Coalition Director. She has an M.A. in International Studies, with a specialization in Conflict, a certificate in International Human Rights Law, and B.A.s in International Studies and Spanish.

As members of the Grassroots Leadership Council (GLC), we had the opportunity to host a meeting with members of the Aurora City Council last month! Representatives Gianina Horton (Ward I), Alli Jackson (At-Large), and Alison Coombs (Mayor Pro Tem) joined the member organizations and resident leaders of the GLC, as well as the public, to connect and discuss their priorities for the northwest Aurora community.

Thank you to one of Montview’s Active Parents and local northwest Aurora resident leader Veronica M., who spoke on behalf of northwest Aurora families, stating resident priorities related to food access, housing, and safety.

We greatly appreciate the opportunity to engage with the new City Council and look forward to working with them to advance food justice initiatives.

Below are some upcoming events, volunteer opportunities, and workshops in the northwest Aurora from our community partners. These are great opportunities for anyone who is interested in engaging deeper with our local food system!

If you would like to share any opportunities in our future newsletters, please contact [email protected].

Join the Aurora Community Garden Network at a seed cleaning and packing session! This is a great opportunity to support local gardeners, learn about seed saving, and help prepare thousands of packets for the community.

Interested in learning more about home or community gardening? Schedule a complimentary urban gardening consultation with ~sistaotey!

Appointments are available for 45-minute virtual sessions mid-February through March. Bring your questions, plans, and ideas for the 2026 growing season and tell a friend.

Welcome to our first Idea of the Month of 2026! Food Justice NW Aurora is building a multicultural, intergenerational, and intersectional movement for food justice and food sovereignty to transform our local food system in northwest Aurora, Colorado. But what does this mean in practice? This month, we’re focusing on the term community power.

Community power is a framework to describe the capacity of individuals and groups impacted by social inequity to influence policies and decisions that allocate resources to address community needs. This framework shifts consciousness from a lens of philanthropy to one that requires a redistribution of power and advocates for marginalized communities to shape their own future. It enables communities that have been purposefully excluded from decision-making to address and change deep-rooted systemic injustices that have created barriers to equitable resource access. In community organizing, building community power requires long-term relationship building, leadership development, and collective action so residents move from the common state of being informed or consulted, to being decision makers in shaping solutions that directly affect their lives and communities.

The central principles for community power are:

At Food Justice NW Aurora, we believe that food systems solutions should come from within our community and be led by our community. We believe in the abundance and abilities of northwest Aurora, and we leverage the individual and collective skills, talents, and resources of the whole community to create a robust local food system. Our organization was founded by a collective of community residents, gardeners, nonprofit representatives, and advocates. Our strategic retreats, community meetings, and partnerships with residents and community institutions develop and strengthen food systems advocacy priorities.