About Us

Ulum Pixan Athohil Suk’il

(Bird Spirit)
AKA Dania Alejandra Flores-Heagney

FOUNDER, CO-DIRECTOR

Indigenous mixed Woman (Maya, Xinca, Garifuna, Russian Jew and ladino) Mother and Grandmother, born in Guatemala, Mesoamerica, later moving to the US in 1999. She organized in her country around aboriginal, women’s, language issues and the environment. She continues her work here in the U.S. as Co-Director of Global Village and member owner at both Global Village @ Tuck Away Farm Cooperative and Access Co-op. She is a critical thinker, advocate and activist!. She is co-founder of Indigenous Peoples Network (RI/MA), a collaboration with local indigenous peoples and people all over the northeast, recognizing ancestral struggles and forming unity by sharing resources, technologies and ancestral knowledge. International Liaison of the Pocasset Wampanoag Tribe of the Pokanoket Nation, Board member of NESAWG (North East Sustainable Agriculture Working Group) and Stone Soup artist and activist collective. Founding member of NEFOC (North East Farmers of Color).

Christine Hutchinson

BOARD CHAIR

Christine Hutchinson, director of Our CORE Inc., board member of the Northeast Farmers of Color Land Trust, board member of Global Village Farms, and steering committee member of Black Farmers United-NYS, is a veteran teacher in Newburgh, NY.  Christine relocated to the lower Hudson Valley, via Brooklyn and Albany, NY in 2003. In 2004, she started a character education, life-skills, community service program for teen girls. Since 2006, she’s been involved in food justice & self-sufficiency and then small-scale commercial poultry farming. 
Currently, Christine is the education coordinator for Downing Park Urban Farm, a working community farm that grows vegetables, fruits and flowers for local residents. Christine’s work with Our CORE engages youth in growing and stewardship projects, food security and equity issues, and distribution of healthy foods into their communities- via coursework and paid internships.
All of her projects are approached with questioning and melding of disparate ideas, tenacity toward the mission, and the weight of organizing around multiple considerations.

Xiomara Paulino

BOARD TREASURER

Xiomara Paulino was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. She and her 3 siblings came to the United States in 1994 to reunite with their mother. At the moment she moved to the US, Xiomara was already a college student and an active member of her community in the Dominican Republic and emigrating represented a setback to her due to not knowing the language (English). Her first years in the US she worked in factories during the day and studied English at night. Her college education was postponed for about 5 years, which was the time that took her to learn the language enough so she could enter and be successful in college. Xiomara has experienced first hand how it feels to be silent, to be overlooked, and to not have a voice while at the same time have so much to say and contribute — all this because you don’t know the primary language -English.  Shortly after coming to the U.S and driven by the last bit of support, she engaged in the community. She was a member and served on the Board of DARE (Direct Action for Right and Equality) for many years. In this organization she fought for equality and rights of the most undeserved. Xiomara continues working and active in the community, she is now a worker’s owner of Access Coop, a cooperative that aims to bring language justice to community members

Yania Peralta

BOARD MEMBER

Yania Peralta was born and raised in the Dominican Republic. She is the youngest of four siblings, was an active member of her community, and graduated her studies immigrating to the United States in 1989 and was unable to continue her studies for a while. In the meantime she worked in factories for four years. She then got involved with AmeriCorps NCCC (National Civilian Community Corps), which in turn got her involved with the community and other programs like the Providence Public Schools and (Direct Action For Right and Equality). Despite her hardships with finding work, learning a new language, and experiencing discrimination, she maintains positivity and a drive for helping the community. She has been a community organizer at Making Connections Providence and a board member at Calvary Baptist church. She’s also been able to start an organization of her own, Bridge2Hope International, that extends here and other countries, but the most difficult hurdle for her is the language barrier, but that hasn’t stopped her yet.

K. Melchor Quick Hall 
EDUCATION DIRECTOR

(she/her/hers) is a popular education and community-based researcher, currently working as a postdoctoral fellow for Wellesley College’s Anti-Carceral Co-Laboratory and the Education Director at Global Village Farms. In these current professional roles, she advances abolitionist and food sovereignty futures that are longstanding commitments. As a New America Us@250 Lumina Foundation Fellow, Hall is organizing the “Aiming for Freedom: Race, Reparations & Right Paths” traveling art exhibition, which features Black feminist artistic visions of our shared liberation. She is the author of Naming a Transnational Black Feminist Framework: Writing in Darkness and the co-editor, with Gwyn Kirk, of Mapping Gendered Ecologies: Engaging with and Beyond Ecowomanism and Ecofeminism. 

Matt Feinstein

CO-DIRECTOR, CLERK

Matt Feinstein is Co-Director of Global Village Farms and the Co-op Clinic Program Manager with the U.S. Federation of Worker Cooperatives. He is of ashkenazi jewish and european ancestry and is based in Grafton, MA (Nipmuc territory). For over ten years he was the co-director of Worcester Roots, a grassroots co-op organizing group that focuses on urban worker cooperatives with a social justice lens. Matt is a dedicated parent and passionate about social and environmental justice organizing, worker cooperatives and supporting youth to become agents of change. Using documentary film as a tool for connecting social movements worldwide, Matt speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese and French and has collaborated on film projects with groups in Argentina, Brazil and Worcester, MA.

Jair Perez
Outreach Coordinator

(he/him/his) is a professional cook, a community organizer, and on-and-off farmer. As a member of the Party for Socialism and Liberation, he has been entrenched in Palestine work in the national coalition, ShutItDownforPalestine, in Rhode Island. As an organizer for the Hatuey Project, he is helping build Cuba solidarity work in Rhode Island. He is a contributor to Liberation News, and writes poetry in his free time.

Jill Ferreira

Jill was born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts and is a descendant of Portuguese and Italian immigrants. After high school, she studied Deaf Culture studies and American Sign Language at Bristol Community College, and went on to study Anthropology & Psychology at UMass Boston, where her love of multiculturalism and community continued to expand. 

Her passion for food and work in various areas of the supply chain has evolved to a deeper desire for an intimate relationship to the land. Her work with Global Village Farms is aligned with her values of access and education for food and land. 

Jill and her dog Ralph, spend much time in Providence, RI, where Jill is able to maintain work and connections with the non-profit organizations, Bridge to Hope International, Healing Arrows, Reclaim RI, as well as the Bell Street dog park community. Currently, Jill also works for Equal Exchange, and is based in Freetown, MA on Pocasset Pokanoket, Wampanoag land.