For 15 years, Marnita’s Table has authentically welcomed over 64,000 people to Intentional Social Interaction (IZI)! TeamTable will always remember 2019 as the year we went not just national but international! Last year we hosted IZIs all over Minnesota, in Seattle, Washington, for the Kansas City Federal Reserve, and across the pond in London for a multinational organization YSC Consulting! The Youth Cultural Healing Summit we created and facilitated for the Catalyst Initiative of the Minneapolis Foundation was covered nationally by CBS, while our second annual “Building Bridges Breaking Bread” with City Council Vice President Andrea Jenkins and her team was covered by the Southwest Journal. These events brought together over 300 community members each and generated great interest in replicating and expanding them in 2020. We are currently seeking funding, sponsorships and community partners to bring IZI to more communities, especially where it was needed most!
2019 also saw us working to deliver the highly successful unConference “Sawubona” for Best Buy’s Diversity and Inclusion team. Our work this year included successful demonstration projects with the Hennepin County DOCCR, Eastern Carver County Schools, and School District 191 (Eagan, Burnsville, Savage).
Humans Gods Monsters, our 2019 Start The Conversation Gala, was joined by ImagineAct! a way to build much needed resources for Marnita’s Table while catalyzing leadership and more diverse professional networks for the woman who attend.
Save March 5th, 2020 for ImagineAct 2020 at St Mary’s Event Center in Uptown and November 7th, 2020 for Start the Conversation: Aliens Others Us! at Westminster Event Center, Downtown Minneapolis.
In 2020 we are energized to bring IZI to as many people as possible! Our first quarter is filled with events with Eastern Carver County Schools and the City of Chaska, ImagineAct! 2020, and two different engagement series on our food system with The Food Group and U of M Extension’s EFNEP program.
If you are interested in helping us bring our work to places where need is great but funding may be lacking, please consider donating at MarnitasTable.org/contribute. If you are interested in finding a way to bring the IZI model into your community or organization or just want to know more about our work, please contact [email protected]