Still Time to Join the Anti-Hunger Summit

On Thursday, September 3, Flagstaff Family Food Center and our partners throughout the region will gather for the 2026 Northern Arizona Anti-Hunger Summit. This event will bring together community leaders, advocates, and partners to strengthen our region’s response to hunger. There’s still time to join! Reserve your tickets online by August 28, 2026!

This is our third annual summit, and our theme this year is “More Voices. Better Decisions. Stronger Communities.” It reflects the growth of the summit and the ongoing work of the Northern Arizona Hunger Action Partnership. This coalition formed after the first summit that works to reduce hunger and expand access to nutritious food throughout the region. (Learn about the coalition’s newly hired coordinator, Michel Marizco, below.)

This year’s summit will focus on sustaining that progress amid rising hunger rates, increased resistance, and collective fatigue. It’s no secret that addressing food insecurity is harder this year than it has been in the past. Called the year of the “double squeeze” – persistently high inflation coupled with unprecedented cuts in federal assistance, including dramatic reductions in SNAP benefits.

Rev. Cho brings both powerful insights from the front lines of hunger relief and a refreshing sense of humor – the title of his 2020 advocacy book is Thou Shalt Not Be a Jerk: A Christian’s Guide to Engaging Politics.

The summit will also feature breakout sessions and optional field trips to Flagstaff Family Food Center, Forestdale Farm, and McCallister Ranch.

Creating a more resilient and equitable food system for our region takes innovation, persistence, and collective action. We hope you will join us for this inspiring summit and continue the momentum to transform our food infrastructure to eliminate hunger for all of our neighbors.

NAHAP Names Coalition Coordinator

The Northern Arizona Hunger Action Partnership recently welcomed Michel Marizco as the group’s Coalition Coordinator.

So how does a newshound become a coordinator for a group addressing food insecurity and inequity? It turns out both require some of the same skills.

“I’ve made a career out of reporting and writing about underreported and underrepresented communities,” he said. “You can’t do that level of work without a deep level of empathy and appreciation for the people that you are writing about. It’s a job from the heart.”

Michel’s sense of empathy and community led him to become a volunteer at Flagstaff Family Food Center last year. He quickly was struck by two things: the scale of the challenge of hunger in the region and the dedication of the staff and volunteers at FFFC to meet that challenge.

Supporting the Northern Arizona Hunger Action Partnership

Now Michel is putting his skills as a communicator and an organizer to further the goals of NAHAP. He wants to make people more aware of the work that needs to be done to take a fragmented food infrastructure to a place where more people can be helped and hunger can be eliminated.

Part of that is strengthening the coalition of government entities, nonprofits, community leaders and other stakeholders. Michel also wants to make sure that more people understand the challenge northern Arizona – and the rest of the country is facing.

“One of the things that I’m excited I’ll be able to do here is to uplift and broadcast the concerns from those on the ground – the real-time and real-life anguish and stresses that people are experiencing,” he said. “I see NAHAP as a really valuable platform to be able to sort of illustrate and illuminate what those concerns are for people.”