Photo description: This picture features a community member who volunteered their time to till the garden at the Turtle Bay Elder’s Lodge, using the tiller another community member donated to help the elderly residents with their garden.
Based on a conversation with Kahnawà:ke Collective Impact (KCI), interviewed by Erika Massoud and Chúk Odenigbo at the Tamarack Institute, this article is part of a series reflecting on the experiences of groups who participated in the Community of Practice for Collective Climate Transitions (CPCCT), organized by the Tamarack Institute in partnership with the Foundation of Greater Montreal.
Kahnawà:ke Collective Impact (KCI)’s work is deeply grounded in the strengths and knowledge of the Kahnawà:ke First Nation. The organization started as a grassroots initiative and now works on a diversity of projects, including food security, sustainability, and emerging projects designed to increase access to healthy food in the community.
KCI’s work is rooted in the principle that community voice should guide community action. For Brittany McComber, who works on KCI’s food security and special projects portfolio, that means listening closely to what people in her community need and building projects that respond directly to those priorities.
KCI’s work on food security fills a unique role in Kahnawà:ke: the team helps to coordinate collaborative projects and support the emergence of gardening spaces across different parts of the community, including at daycare centres, elementary schools, and elderly residential homes. Often, these partners don’t have the time or capacity to start new projects, such as a community garden, since their focus is on caring for children, teaching students, or supporting elders.
Through collaboration, KCI helps these organizations care for collective gardens. The goal is to increase their harvests and provide access to healthy food for all. This work reflects a broader vision of food security as community care. KCI believes that when people have the knowledge, space, and support to grow food, they can contribute to the well-being of their neighbours and their community.
KCI joined the Community of Practice for Collective Climate Transitions (CPCCT) to hear different perspectives and help bring visibility to the work happening in Kahnawà:ke. Beyond workshop content, each session offered the opportunity to learn from others and understand how different people interpret and respond to similar challenges in their communities.
According to Brittany, being in conversation with others who are navigating similar challenges provided a sense of support and helped her find more confidence in her approach. It was a reminder that community change work is often a learning process and that not knowing everything is part of the journey. Building on that learning, the CPCCT also offered support on how to approach collaboration and communicate impact, which aligned with KCI’s priorities to make their work more visible and better understood.
While reflecting on their challenges and opportunities for growth moving forward, KCI talked about the importance of helping their community understand who they are and what they do. Community members often can’t distinguish between the different organisations in Kahnawà:ke and what they bring to the table. Different groups in the community use different approaches to tackle food insecurity and climate change. For example, some local initiatives in Kahnawà:ke may focus on cultural and ancestral knowledge to grow food, while KCI works with a combination of conventional and non-conventional agricultural practices to respond to the community’s needs.
Better visibility of KCI’s work would help community members, funders, other nonprofits, and partners understand what makes their organization distinct from others and, at the same time, how best to support each organization appropriately. By raising awareness of their work, KCI aims to demonstrate how their unique approach contributes to the shared goal of strengthening community well-being.
For KCI, solidarity is a key ingredient to community health and well-being. If someone grows four tomato plants to sustain themselves, they can grow one or two extra plants to share with a neighbour, contribute to food baskets, or support someone in need. This kind of action does not require a large plot of land or a grand project. Growing a little more than what one household needs can help reduce pressure for another family. It can turn a home garden into a small but meaningful contribution to community food security.
KCI’s role to grow solidarity around food security is also educational. Through social media and community outreach, KCI helps people learn about plants, understand what is beneficial, recognize native species, and build confidence to grow their own food. The goal is to help people take more control over their health and deepen their relationship with food and the land.
Beyond their collaborative gardening project in the community, KCI is exploring a larger project involving agricultural shipping containers and indoor cultivation. This project would create opportunities to grow food during the off-season and introduce approaches such as aquaponics, hydroponics, vertical farming, and container farming.
In addition to this work, KCI is working on the Kaientho:sera Agricultural Society, a community-led initiative focused on strengthening agriculture and food sovereignty in Kahnawà:ke. The society will create more ways for community members to reconnect with each other and the land by growing food, while supporting those already involved in farming and food production. Its approach reflects a broader understanding of food sovereignty: one that is tied to land, culture, and the community’s ability to shape its own food systems by determining how food is grown, shared, and sustained.
Ultimately, KCI believes that working on food sovereignty is a way to reconnect children with agriculture and the land, while supporting access to healthy food in the community. Food security is both practical and relational. As much as the work is about gardens and growing food, it is also about building relationships, confidence, collaboration, and the belief that everyone can contribute in some way to the community’s well-being.
KCI’s work reminds us that community change does not always begin with a large-scale intervention. It begins with listening to what the community is asking for, helping a school garden thrive, or growing a few extra tomatoes for a neighbour. In Kahnawà:ke, those small acts are part of strengthening local food systems for generations to come and imagining a more sustainable future rooted in community care.
An artificial intelligence tool internal to the Tamarack Institute was used to assist with transforming the transcription of this interview recording into a text format. The final version of the text was modified, corrected, and approved by the Tamarack team and the communities involved.