Gillian Goddard
Gillian Goddard is a systems thinker, community organizer, and chocolate maker who engages with food and agriculture as a means of instigating global change.
Biography
Gillian Goddard is a systems thinker, community organizer, and chocolate maker who engages with food and agriculture as a means of instigating change. She has been gardening and farming indigenous style for over three decades.
Founder of the Alliance of Rural Communities (ARC), a non-profit where rural and semi-rural residents, with urban partners, create communities of intention around the principles of regenerative farming, sustainable rural livelihood creation, and circular economy. ARC started in Trinidad and Tobago in 2014 and has spread throughout the Caribbean region to Dominica, St. Lucia, and Guyana.
In 2021, Goddard expanded her community of intention across the Atlantic Ocean, as the Founder and Convenor of the Cross Atlantic Chocolate Collective. The Collective unites farming communities from Africa to the Caribbean, to North America. Countries include Malawi, Tanzania, Uganda, Ghana, Nigeria, Cameroon, Cote D’Ivoire, Jamaica, Dominica, Grenada, St. Lucia, Trinidad and Tobago, and the United States.
By combining experiences and stories involving food and community Goddard tackles complex issues around power, decolonization, and emancipation. In 2022, the Inter-American Institute for Cooperation on Agriculture (IICA) awarded Goddard with the “Soul of Rurality” award for her work in enhancing rural communities, protecting biodiversity, and improving food security.
She was a visiting faculty member at Bennington for Spring 2023.