CANDOR Community Food

We are an Autistic, Multiply-Divergent, Chronically-ill, and Disabled-led and run organization, living across the intersections of race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, gender, gender expression, and spirituality. While an Autistic identity is the most common lived experience amongst our staff, our work is cross-disability and cross-movement.

CANDOR's Community Food program is a way to discover, grow, mobilize, and distribute the abundance of fresh foods we have in community. We partner with other organizations and businesses within our community to activate green spaces and resources in the collective effort to create food justice and a place of belonging for all. We believe that the interdependence of people and communities is an essential element of our collective liberation. The West End Free Market provides the West End, Lyon Park, and Lakewood communities with organic, local, high-quality produce and dry goods twice a month. Currently, there are over 350 members with about 90 families participating in each market. This market is made possible through the strength of partnerships: West End Community Foundation, Inc., Blue Cross Blue Shield, Duke Campus Farm, Farmer Foodshare, Root Causes, Happy Dirt, Ninth Steet Bakery, and Seal the Seasons. The West End Free Market values dignity, access, responsiveness, sustainability, collective care, and a sense of abundance for all. CANDOR Farm supports the West End Free Market, by growing foods that reflect and respect local preferences, ensuring that fresh, culturally relevant produce is available at market. This also strengthens the market’s ability to sustain itself over time. This cycle of care and collaboration dismantles traditional hierarchies of food access, replacing them with a framework of shared abundance.