Gardening the Community Archive
Gardening the Community is a project of NOFA/Massachusetts. Currently the project strives to help youth understand the importance of healthy locally grown food, environmental justice, and community empowerment, as well as gain first time job experience, and leadership training, in a safe, supporting, and fun atmosphere.
Gardening the Community Pictures
City Garden Program Offering After-School Programs The Gardening the Community (GtC) project has been working with local community-based after-school programs to provide a community youth workshop series. During the month of March students at the Martin Luther King Jr. Community Center and the New North Citizen's council after school program will meet weekly to discuss topics such as organic growing methods, health/nutrition, local food systems, hunger awareness, community food security and urban agriculture. Students learn about where their food comes from, how that food is being grown, and how they can play a role in that food system. Gardening the Community is also working with ARISE and the Maple High Six Corners Neighborhood Council to form a growers club within the area. The growers club will hold workshops on practical growing skills, food preservation, market and garden planning, cooking and more (depending on community needs or expertise of trainers). GtC is looking for individuals willing to volunteer to conduct a workshop in any of these areas. Participants will work with neighboring backyard gardeners and those interested in gardening to promote urban agriculture, expose the community to more locally grown food and work with a partner farmers market in downtown Springfield. This farmer's market is located on Main St. across from Tower Square in the center of town. The market is set up every Friday, 10 a.m. - 3 p.m. from May to September. Space, marketing and promotion are free. Diversity of products such as food and crafts are requested. NOFA/Mass vendors interested in participating should contact Ruby at (413) 781-6967 or rrmaddox@hotmail.com. GtC continues to raise in-kind and monetary donations for its summer program and is working to create a youth and agriculture roundtable at the NOFA/summer conference this year, inviting all youth and agriculture programs from all over the region to meet and discuss issues relating to gardening/farming with youth. More Gardening the Community Pictures
Our Year in the Garden 2003 has been an incredible and exciting year. Gardening the Community (GC) was blessed with the support of sponsor's like NOFA/Mass, and Maple High Six Corners Neighborhood Council of Springfield, MA, and the financial support of The Open Field Foundation, The Western Mass. Community Foundation, and the New England Grassroots Environmental Fund. Gardening the Community has truly begun to reach out to the community and build roots. GC was recognized by the Maple High Six Corners Neighborhood Council with a Community Service Award, for working to help improve the community. All 12 GC students were also individually recognized for their efforts in completing the program. GC students worked for 12 weeks this past summer, growing food in a garden at 488 Central St., Springfield, which was started in 2002 by GC youth. As part of the program GC students visited area farms, including the Food Bank Farm in Hadley, Red Fire Farm in Ludlow, and The Many Hands Organic Farm in Barre. Students visited other youth garden groups like Nuestras Raices in Holyoke, and UGROW, in Worcester. In August the GC students participated in community service at the Loaves and Fishes soup kitchen in downtown Springfield. Thanks to NOFA/Mass and an anonymous donor, I was able to attend the 2003 Bioneers Conference in San Rafael, CA. It was amazing! I was able to meet with other people who were involved in social and ecological change, and learned more about the connection between the two. Although I knew that the work I was doing was important, at the Bioneers Conference I realized how vital urban agriculture development was. I learned how communities can become empowered by improving access to healthy and local agriculture and I began to see more clearly why depletion of resources should be a concern of all communities not just rural or wealthy ones. When I left the Bioneers I was excited. I knew that I was in a position to bring this knowledge to my community and I would. Jonathan Bates, the garden coordinator, and I attended the 2003 Community Food Security Coalition (CFSC) conference, in Boston, MA (Nov 1-5). With support from a conference scholarship, in an initiative called B.L.A.S.T. (Building Lasting Agriculture Systems Today), we were able to join a partnership with CFSC and The Food Project to incorporate a meaningful youth presence at the conference. The theme of the conference was called Growing the Movement and we discussed new opportunities and challenges for community food security. There were community youth agriculture groups from all over the country. Most of them were grassroots organizations engaged in the same work as GC, and interested in educating and empowering communities through their local food system. We were able to network with other groups in an effort to become involved in the BLAST initiative locally and nationally. I realized that local farmers could play a vital part in helping urban communities become more sustainable, through projects such as ours. Communities could then become more aware of where their food comes from, and can then take an active role in supporting and developing that food system. GC is continuing to grow, adding another lot to the project, which has been given by the Maple High Six Corners Neighborhood Council. We will continue to engage more of the community by promoting urban agriculture, making nutrition information and healthy food more accessible, and exposing more youth to sustainable growing practices, environmental justice, and community leadership. By Jennifer, A Gardening the Community Junior Staffer July 2nd, 2003 At Jonathan's house... We did our morning exercises (circle games) and went to see the animals. (a few pigs, a Japanese deer and a few emus) and learned it takes more than one year to make a compost pile naturally. (6 months if turned) [We saw] a few roosters (but it's not like I hear them every morning in Springfield). Then there was a water garden with a very familiar plant (as seen in Forest Park) the cattail. [The water garden] was easily constructed (a child's wading pool, some aquamarine plants and a filter). We also saw a rather large garden mostly flowers. But personally I think the green house (which he and his friend constructed themselves) was the centerpiece. GtC Program Coordinatorr, Kristin Brennan, brennanstaub@verizon.net This page was last modified on January 20, 2008 at 10:05:19 AM. |
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