Orrin Williams is the Food Systems Coordinator who joined the Chicago Partnership for Health Promotion in July of 2015. Orrin is also the co-founder and executive director of the Center for Urban Transformation (CUT) in Chicago.
He received a Bachelor of Arts in Sociology from Northeastern Illinois University in December of 1983. As the Food Systems Coordinator Orrin seeks partnerships with various segments of the food system such as community gardens and urban farms to promote CPHP program interventions. Orrin in this role also does policy, systems, and environmental change work with community-based, BIPOC organizations, primarily on the south and west sides of Chicago.
The CUT is an organization devoted to researching and applying ecologically and human oriented solutions to the creation of healthy urban communities in partnership with researchers and experts from various disciplines, that is informed by human rights, environmental justice, and various earth-based spiritual systems…
Orrin has been an advocate for urban agriculture, community and home-based gardening, food security, and food access and food sovereignty for over 35 years.
Orrin has also been active in a variety of undertakings including the environmental justice, food systems, food justice, applied ecology and ecological design, health equity and integrative health modalities for decades.
He has contributed a chapter entitled, “Food and Justice: The Critical Link to Healthy Communities” in Power, Justice, and the Environment: A Critical Appraisal of the Environmental Justice Movement Edited by David N. Pellow and Robert J. Brulle MIT Press 2005, linking food policy on many levels to environmental justice among other writings for the Center for Humans and Nature. Those writings include the essay “Skinfolks, Kinfolks and the Kinship of Oneness” in Volume Four of “Belonging in A World of Relations”, and other programs and organizations.
Orrin is the co-host and co-producer of the Roots Watering Hole podcast series with soil scientist and soil advocate, Dr. Akilah Martin.
CONTRIBUTIONS TO HUMANS & NATURE:
- Shifting Systems: How Cities Can Create Food Security and Enhance Ecosystem Health
A response to “What does it mean to be a farmer in the twenty-first century?” - Walking a Path for Healing
From Minding Nature’s Spring 2019, Volume 12, Number 2 issue.
