[FWD: Featuring CROPMOBSTER, Feb. 19, at Sonoma New Economy Project]

[in...@shellybrowning.com]

Hello Friends,

It is my pleasure to send out this announcement to you of our second speaker event of the year. Hope to see you there. Please share with friends...

Thank you,

Shelly

The Sonoma New Economy Project

warmly invites you to the next Speaker Series event

February 19 from 6-8 pm at the Share Exchange, 531 5th Street in Santa Rosa:

CROPMOBSTER
How a Petaluma Startup is Transforming Regional Agriculture: Redistributing Food, Reducing Waste and Growing the Shared Economy

The Sonoma New Economy Project hosts its second event of the year with a presentation and discussion featuring Nick Papadopoulos, founder and creator of CropMobster. The CropMobster Community Exchange, which first took root at Sonoma County’s Bloomfield Organics farm in March 2013, provides an instant-alert service linking communities-in-need with local farmers, producers and food purveyors who have excess food to sell or donate.

Through CropMobster, people with surplus food at risk of going to waste publish an alert – in the form of a deal, donation, freebie, hunger relief food gleaning, or “wanted” alert – which gets instantly shared via email, Facebook and other social media. With the power of community crowd-sourcing, individuals, organizations, small businesses and hunger relief groups quickly respond to the “emergency” by collecting the excess food and redistributing it as needed. Meanwhile, farmers, grocers and other food distributors can bring in extra revenue for food that would otherwise be wasted – and earn visibility and gratitude in the process. Regular impact stories from these new food-economy relationships get posted, expanding their moral and practical value to people everywhere.

In under one year since it launched, the innovative community-driven food service has spread to the greater SF Bay Area, with a dozen counties participating, more than 300,000 pounds of food saved and over 1 million servings eaten. Already more than 4,000 participants and hundreds of farmers and small food businesses are joining with CropMobster, inspiring communities around the U.S. to think and act differently about how to transform food waste and surplus into community value and resiliency. Visit CropMobster.com, learn about their work in Time, Huffington Post, CCTV and Shareable – and come February 19 to learn how you can get involved in this grassroots effort to change our food system and our economy.

There is an optional $5 donation at the door, though no one will be turned away. Looking forward to seeing you... please spread the word!

-Your friends at the Sonoma New Economy Project