Join the first Leadership Dialogues on Friday, April 28 at 1 pm ET and read the online interview with Will Allen of Growing Power Community Food Center and a 2005 Leadership for a Changing World award recipient and Anthony Flaccavento of Appalachian Sustainable Development and a 2004 Leadership for a Changing World award recipient. Flaccavento and Allen will discuss and share on issues related to sustainable agriculture, organic farming, and food security.

Questions can be submitted until April 14, 2006.

Will Allen, Growing Power Community Food Center

Those who live in poor, urban areas often have little access to high-quality food. As large grocers flee inner cities, convenience stores and other high-priced alternatives become these neighborhoods' only sources of groceries. The Milwaukee neighborhood where Growing Power is located is one of these communities. Ninety-six percent of the residents are African American, 37 percent are under the age of 17, and 34 percent live below the poverty line.

Will Allen was a star basketball player at the University of Miami and a professional basketball player for six years. After a decade in marketing, he went back to his roots: He bought the last farm in the city of Milwaukee and began farming. That love for the land, coupled with Allen's passion to share his knowledge, changes lives.

Allen's work transforming communities began in 1993 with a farm and a farm stand. By 1995, he had created Farm City Link, an experimental agriculture operation in a large, run-down greenhouse in central Milwaukee. Allen raised money, bought and renovated the structure and opened its doors to young people to learn life skills, gain agricultural expertise, and build a sense of community responsibility. Before long, Allen's vision broadened, and Farm City Link became part of Growing Power Community Food Center, the umbrella organization for groups advancing Allen's vision for community agriculture. Earthlinks was added in 1997 as a youth-based project under the Growing Power banner. Today, Earthlinks has become the Growing Power Youth Corps.

Allen's Milwaukee farm is a hands-on agricultural training facility where community members can train in horticulture, aquaculture, poultry raising, beekeeping, vermiculture (worm castings), land conservation, food processing, and marketing. In 2002, Growing Power expanded its reach once again through a regional network of trainers in sustainable agriculture who spread this knowledge in cities, rural areas and Native American communities.

Anthony Flaccavento, Appalachian Sustainable Development

The economies of southwest Virginia and east Tennessee remain tied to the land. Farms and forests are entwined with family histories. Traditionally, the region's major industries have been coal, small tobacco farms, and timber. In recent decades, as economic conditions changed, many towns in this region had to make the hard choices between jobs and the preservation of land, and often, lost both when employers moved away from the area.

Anthony Flaccavento, originally from New York City, has lived in the Appalachian region of Virginia and Tennessee since 1985. After graduate studies at the University of Pittsburgh, Flaccavento became Director of the Appalachian Office of Justice and Peace in St. Paul, Va., a 12-county community-development office of the Catholic diocese. Over time, he realized that traditional approaches didn't always bring the best results for the communities. His work immersed him in the culture he served and this immersion became the foundation of his activism.

High levels of unemployment are common in coal-mining economies, but Flaccavento saw an alternative in "sustainable livelihood" jobs. In 1990, he helped organize the Coalition for Jobs and the Environment (CJE). In 1995, Flaccavento founded Appalachian Sustainable Development (ASD), an outgrowth of CJE. Its aim: build a new economy based on organic agriculture and ecologically sound harvest and production of forest products.

In the late 1990s, tobacco farming went into a rapid decline. Many small-scale growers -- feeling under siege from health advocates, shrinking markets, and environmentalists -- were ready to quit farming, even though their families had known no other livelihood for generations. Recognizing the plight of small-scale tobacco farmers and the simultaneous gap in the region's organic-produce supplies, ASD launched Appalachian Harvest, a co-op program for new and experienced organic farmers, in 2000. Co-op participants now sell their fresh, organic produce wholesale to major retail markets.

In 2001, ASD launched the Sustainable Woods Initiative, a collaboration of local economic-development agencies, grass-roots environmentalists, the Nature Conservancy, conservation-minded loggers, small-scale landowners and the departments of forestry in Virginia and Tennessee. This unlikely partnership led to a regional shift toward low-impact timber harvests, and construction of a solar kiln and wood-processing facility. This shift has created improvements in the local economy. In the past, timber was cut locally and sent to other parts of the country for sawing and processing. Now it is possible to do all of this locally.