Urban agriculture programs hold immense
potential to be a vital part of a growing movement to bring fresh, nutritious, local food to urban residents. With our farm
project, we hope to expand on its mission of feeding the hungry. Because so many families have been burdened with chronic
poverty, many of the people served at the Soup Kitchen's facilities are families who have been in need for several decades.
We believe that a working farm is an ideal setting for modeling a socially just response to hunger.
Social Justice in the Food System
Our "social justice" approach to food is rooted in
a theory of community food security. Community food security is the ability of all community residents to obtain safe, culturally
acceptable, nutritionally adequate diet through a food system that maximizes community self-reliance and social justice. We
will partner with many other organizations to participate in a comprehensive approach to many of the harms affecting our society
and environment.
Our Outreach Actions.
- Our outreach efforts support those who are looking for more
information about the alternatives.
- We
will co-teach classes on urban community gardening and beekeeping.
- We will welcome visitors youth groups during the school year and summer time.
- We will encourage our co-workers to participate in gardens
and buy local foods.
- We will present
at various group meetings about the importance of beekeeping and environmentally sustainable agriculture.
- We will involve local kids, and by extension, their families,
in our youth programs about nutrition, gardening, and healthy living.
Supporting Food Security in Our
Own Backyard
We
will have volunteers and participants come from all over to contribute work to the farm or learn skills related to community
gardening. Community food security, however, requires that we reach beyond these typical audiences, who already value local
food, to include others who may not yet know how their food choices could promote accessibility of high quality produce in
their neighborhood. To do so, of course, requires effort. We have gone door to door to talk with our neighbors about opportunities
to become involved in gardening programming because we know that some need a more direct invitation to visit the garden. We
hope our neighborhood open house events will be welcoming occasions where we introduce people to the pleasures and benefits
of gardening. We are positively hopeful that fostering these type of information sharing and relationship building activities
will inspire our community to make changes toward building a more just food system. We will implement ideas which include
operating a mobile market to distribute fresh foods to the elderly in the neighborhood and building enabling gardens at senior
care facilities. We envision this as an opportunity to nurture caring relationships, share gardening skills, promote food
system literacy, and share thoughts.
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