Email: emily@roguefoodunites.org
Title: Outreach Specialist
Organization: Rogue Food Unites
Community: Rogue Valley
Population: Ashland – 21,000, Jackson County – 223,259
County Served: Jackson County

Meet Emily Embleton (they/she):

Emily grew up outside of Denver, Colorado, enjoying all the outdoor recreation and artistic opportunities the area has to offer. She attended the Denver School of the Arts for middle and high school, studying theater intensively. Emily went on to attend Willamette University in Salem, Oregon, where she graduated with a B.A in Politics, Policy, Law, and Ethics (PPLE) with a minor in Sustainability, while maintaining a Theater Scholarship with an Acting emphasis.

While studying remotely during the 2020 Covid lockdown, Emily moved to Coos Bay, Oregon and fell in love with rural life and the rugged Oregon coastline. She spent the following summer working in the remote Colorado mountain town that her late aunt had dedicated her life to serving and conserving. This exposure to her aunt’s legacy galvanized Emily into buckling down on their studies with an unwavering dedication to assisting, supporting, and uplifting rural communities, environments, and the Indigenous people who have stewarded them for generations. This is Emily’s second year as a RARE member, having previously served with the City of Florence as their Emergency Management Communications Analyst for her first year. She is ecstatic to be building on her previous experience in disaster preparedness outreach while exploring her passions for grassroots organizing and just food systems.

Community and Organization:

Ashland, Oregon is on the lands of the Shasta, Takelma, and Latgawa peoples, who were violently displaced during Euro-American colonization, the Gold Rush, and the Rogue River Wars. This vibrant town is located in the Rogue Valley, just miles north of the California border. Ashland is known for its world renowned Oregon Shakespeare Festival, year-round outdoor recreation opportunities, and Southern Oregon University.

More recently, the Rogue Valley became known for the Almeda and Obenchain Fires, one of the 2020 Labor Day Wildfires; “the most destructive wildfire[s] in Oregon’s recorded history” (JPR). These fires tore through the area, all-but destroying the towns of Phoenix and Talent. Yet hope has risen from those ashes, as community members and local organizations alike have banded together to provide for the wildfire victims and rebuild the community.

Rogue Food Unites (RFU) was born from those ashes, with the explicit goal of providing hot meals to those displaced or otherwise affected by the wildfires. Since their inception, RFU has continued to be committed to local food security and local wildfire recovery while expanding their programs and recovery services statewide. Today, RFU is a dedicated state-contracted Community Organization Active in Disaster (COAD) that offers disaster case management, provision boxes, health and nutrition education, weekly free no-barriers farmers markets, and hot meals to victims of disasters.

Projects:

As Rogue Food Unites’ Outreach Specialist, Emily is in charge of two main projects in addition to supporting the ongoing Neighbors Unite farmers markets and RFU’s general outreach efforts. Her main project is to analyze the functioning and success of the Neighbors Unite markets to create a comprehensive Market Replicability Toolkit to be shared with other communities in hopes that they can create their own free, no-barriers farmers markets. Emily’s second project is to support the creation and implementation of an internal disaster preparedness plan. She will work with the RFU team as well as partner agencies to put specific policies and procedures in place to ensure RFU’s continued functioning in the event of a local disaster.