Archive for the ‘Community’ Category

Posted by Caitlin Krieck | August 23rd, 2010

[Cross-posted from Beyond Bread.]
Local. Organic. Sustainable. Great buzzwords. But for an organization dedicated to meeting so many urgent immediate needs, “going green” can seem like a daunting prospect.

Yet even the smallest seed can, with care, grow into great bounty. So, recently, at our Southeast facility, we’ve started planting some seeds in the one part of our building that isn’t already bursting at the seams: the roof.

Up to this point, the roof has primarily been known as a great place to get locked out on. But now it features the budding of a small experimental container garden. So far this season, we have been growing radishes, tomatoes, and several types of herbs, including parsley, mint and oregano. Someday soon, we hope this garden will be the inspiration for lots of inter-generational learning, as well as “some darn good cooking.”

Sherita Evans, Community Resources Coordinator

So says Sherita Evans, our southeast community resources coordinator and all-around community advocate, who sees this new project as a logical next step in the evolution of our services to the community. “We lack these kinds of green spaces and educational places here in the community,” she explains. “We’re hungry down here– not just for food but for nourishment of the mind and the spirit. And here at Bread for the City, we’re not just feeding people’s bodies–we feed souls.”

Sherita adds that the recent loss of Food Program Director Ted Pringle has motivated her to redouble commitment to the garden project. “As a site of rebirth and growth,” she says, “this is a proper memorial to Ted.”

Though its productive capacity will be limited, the garden can produce ample herbs to complement the food from our pantry, which will be especially great for our new cooking workshops. This makes it a special complement to our Nutrition Initiative: an opportunity to demonstrate the cooking process from start to finish. “We want to show clients that growing your own food isn’t hard even in small spaces like balconies and window sills,” says Sharon Gruber, our Nutrition Consultant. “And the results are that much better!

Sharon’s workshops can include basic gardening and the use of fresh herbs and veggies

Despite the small scale of the project, we see big implications — like the opportunity for parent-child gardening classes, which could bring families closer together while bringing them closer to the food they eat.

[Click below to read the full post. You can support the development of this garden by donating pots, among other things! Contact me Anna at anna.r.melton@gmail.com to learn how you can help.]

Posted by Jody Tick | August 16th, 2010

There has been a lot of buzz and excitement about the new leadership and direction of the DCPS food services.  The conversation continued yesterday at a DCPS Community Forum, where about 60 parents, teachers, food service professionals, and community organizations gathered to ask questions of DCPS Food Services Director Jeff Mills, Chief Operations Officer Tony Tata, and Director of Health & Wellness Diana Bruce.

As an active DCPS parent, and a program director at the Capital Area Food Bank, I recognized almost every face in the room – fellow parent activist Constance Newman; garden educator Kacie Warner; and anti-hunger advocate Kristin Roberts; just to name a few.  Each of those wonderful stakeholders could be so much more than just a face in the crowd.  We could be valuable assets to the DCPS school meal system, and advocates in support of the changes you plan to make.

Since coming in to town a few months ago, the DCPS food services team has undertaken incredible efforts to transform D.C. school meals. This has been a challenge, given that D.C. school meals have a rocky history plagued by contract mismanagement, financial accountability issues, food safety concerns, and inconsistent leadership.  Jeff Mills and his team have inherited a 60,000 meal-a-day beast of a system, and have been quick to make big promises about how they’re going to turn it around on a dime.  To their credit, they’ve made huge expansions to breakfast in the classroom, piloting supper programs at after-school programs, taking on two new vendors as pilot projects, and hiring new staff.  And there are big promises of things to come, such as a garden-kitchen educational program, special celebratory events, a totally new menu based on unprocessed, fresh foods, 20% local produce, and compliance with IOM standards… the list goes on.

But who’s calling the shots?  What is the end goal?  Where are we headed?

All the people in that room last night are on the same side as Jeff and his team.  We want the great things for our kids and our community that they rattled off – more fresh, unprocessed foods, more local produce, better access to school meals.  But we understand that it won’t be easy to get those foods on D.C. cafeteria trays, and then get kids eat them.  You’ll need the community to be your allies in this.  But a few things need to change.

First, you must engage us. We need a formal system for providing input and giving feedback.  It is not enough for you to stand in front of us and tell us what’s happening.  We need to have a formal “Advisory Committee” comprised of a wide swath of community members and national experts to be a part of the planning and execution of the new DCPS school meal operation.  We need this NOW, as plans for the future are being shaped and defined, not after they have already been developed.

Second, slow down. Nobody is expecting a barrage of reforms that will solve every aspect of the DCPS school meals all at once.  The issues plaguing the DCPS school food system run deep, and have been decades in the making (as you probably know better than we do).  We would rather see a few simple, measurable goals achieved than dozens of efforts pulled together quickly.

Third, show us a strategic plan. This city has seen too many well-intentioned but piecemeal efforts to improve the health and well-being of our youth.  We need to be thinking not months, but years into the future at what DCPS food services will look like.  Tony Tata himself said that DCPS has no idea what this operation will look like after this year, and that’s unacceptable.  Other large, urban school districts have overcome the same issues we are facing and are serving the types of meals we strive to serve.  Let us learn from their successes and failures, and develop a strategic plan to get where we all want to go, with attention to the unique strengths and weaknesses we have here in the nation’s capital.

Fourth, be transparent. Keep us in the loop with your plans, the criteria you use to evaluate foods, how you spend our taxpayer dollars, where your food is coming from and what’s down the pipeline.  It’s not enough for you to give us vague responses to our questions from time to time – stay ahead of the curve and provide us with concrete information.

You can have our 100% support in these efforts if you engage us, and make calculated, strategic change towards our common goals, and are transparent with the community you’re serving.  And believe me, it is going to take our support and buy-in on a much deeper level to realize the ambitious goals that we all have for D.C. school food.  We owe it to the thousands of children who depend on these meals each day to work together on this while we have the chance.  Let’s get it right.

Posted by Ken Moore | August 4th, 2010

DC has no county or state fair where DC residents can show off their talents in baking, canning, urban agriculture, poetry, and photography, for example. We decided that was a shame, so, starting this year, we’re changing that. We, a group of three DC resident garden and food bloggers, are partnering with Columbia Heights Day to hold the first-ever DC State Fair, which will feature such contests as Tastiest Tomato, Most Funky Vegetable, Best Home-Made Pie, a DC neighborhood photography contest, best backyard chicken egg, andbest homemade jam, to name a few. DC residents will be able to submit their entries soon for a chance to win everlasting glory (and prizes!) –keep an eye on the DC State Fair website for entry forms. The DC State Fair, with contest judging and prizes, will be held on August 28th, hosted by the Columbia Heights Day festival.

The state or county fair concept is largely focused around community: The fair provides a forum for neighbors to engage one another, to share knowledge and experience, and to spotlight and reward the hard work of cooking, crafting, and farming. DC State Fair strives to achieve these same goals within the District and to help build a multicultural community focused around urban agriculture, education, and art.

In order to pull this off, DC State Fair is still looking for sponsors at all levels. These sponsors may also choose to have the honor of judging various contests. For example, DC-based businesses and organizations can be Table Sponsors, who will have a spot under the DC State Fair canopy and receive top exposure to DC State Fair attendees . Current Table Sponsors include A Few Cool Hardware Stores and Kid Power. There are also opportunities for contest sponsorship and general sponsorship from community members. For more details, please contact the DC State Fair planning committee or visit the DC State Fair’s website. DC businesses and nonprofits that focus on education, nutrition, agriculture, gardening, or related activities and that are not able to sponsor the fair can still be a part of this great event by getting a table Please contact us for more information on how to be involved on any of these levels.

Beyond the vegetable, cooking, and art competitions run by DC State Fair, Columbia Heights Day festival itself will feature two stages with musical acts and dancers, a petting zoo, a dog show, a kids’ area, and many other activities and DC-based groups.

DC State Fair’s aim is to turn this event into an annual tradition that fosters community spirit and celebrates DC’s talented residents. And maybe there will be funnel cake, too.

The planning committee consists of three DC resident food and garden bloggers: Amelia Showalter of Gradually Greener, whose post last year started the ball rolling; Jenna Huntsberger of Modern Domestic; and Ken Moore of The Indoor Garden(er).

Posted by Jessica Myhre | August 3rd, 2010

This summer, a youth program called DC is Building Green Bridges has been busily gardening, learning about nutrition, and discussing food security issues east of the Anacostia River. Our students are engaged, intelligent, and working hard!

They have created a pilot ‘community needs’ survey to determine the viability of a farmers market at THEARC on Mississippi Avenue—and they’ve just conducted their first surveys at senior centers in wards 7 and 8. They have written their own blog posts and have created a social networking page for the program. Below is the their first blog post, written in the hopes to gain exposure to the program and their project. Enjoy!

Hello world, allow us to introduce ourselves: we are DC is Building Green Bridges. Building Green Bridges is a program based in Washington D.C. consisting of youth who are interested in making a better community by educating and informing the people about eating healthy, making better health choices, and ultimately, changing the way people view our city as a whole by growing our own food in the city.

Here are the goals we are hoping to achieve:

1. To assess whether or not a new farmers market in Ward 8 would be beneficial to our community around THEARC, located near the Parkland Villages on Mississippi Avenue in Southeast.
2. To educate the community on eating healthy and making better food choices.
3. To get youth involved in positive activities in their community.
4. To reconstruct and maintain community gardens in schools and recreation centers for younger children

Currently we are working on establishing a garden at THEARC. We are planting a flower garden with junipers, flowers, butterfly bushes and hollies. We are also helping to set up a garden at the Ferebee-Hope Elementary School, which will encourage the younger students to take advantage of the garden and plant on their own. In addition, we are visiting different gardens around the city such as The Peoples Garden, Common Goods City Farm, The U.S. Botanic Gardens, Lederer Youth Garden, and the Marion Street Garden.

Before we can implement any course of action for a farmers market, we must complete a needs assessment to help us better understand what the community would best profit from. Will a farmers market be viable? Do people want one? Our assessment won’t be very long; it’s just a few questions designed, revised, and tailored to provide us with the most information about the needs of Ward 8 residents, while at the same time not hampering your schedule with a lengthy interview.

Currently, we are brainstorming ideas for alternatives to the on street survey, one of which may be filling out the survey online. Having an online option may appeal to people who do not have time to fill out a survey in the street. Another alternative we are considering would be for people to mail a completed survey to us. This may appeal to those without an Internet connection.

If a farmers market was opened at THEARC, it would provide fresh fruits and vegetables grown in the community, for the community. Fresh produce that will be sold at THEARC would be better than the produce found in most supermarkets, because the produce in supermarkets is shipped from countries around the world, and are pumped full of chemical pesticides that are harmful to the people that eat them.

Our goal is to help the community. But in order to do that, we need the assistance of the community. Please take the time to check out our program, so that you can help make YOUR community better.

Posted by Greg Bloom | July 29th, 2010

Yesterday I posted the statement presented by the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Justice at the US Social Forum in Detroit last month. The statement is a collective declaration — of the shared principles and intentions (“…re-building local food economies in our own communities, dismantling structural racism, democratizing land access, building opportunities for the leadership of our youth, and working towards food sovereignty in partnership with social movements around the world…”).

As I reported during the Social Forum, many of these principles and intentions can be seen in practice in Detroit. My reporting there only scratched the surface of the work that’s been done — and one of the things I learned was how much discussion and collective self-reflection had come before (and in the course of) meaningful action.

In the particular case of Detroit, the local food movement engaged in a series of workshops (facilitated by the People’s Institute for Survival and Beyond) focused on confronting and dismantling racism in both the industrial food system and the movement itself. Participants analyzed race and power dynamics, and emerged with a shared set of ideas and vocabulary with which they can collaboratively work to restructure those dynamics.

During the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Justice at the Social Forum, participants formed a breakout group to focus specifically on this process of dismantling racism in the food system. As a white person of privilege working towards food justice in low-income, largely black communities in DC, I was grateful for the opportunity to join this group and learn more about my own role. Several leaders of Detroit’s movement helped facilitate the conversation, and we worked hard to consider what broad lessons could be drawn from their experience. The need (and desire) for greater dialogue was shared by all at the table, but many local food movements might not yet be at a point where it’s possible to gather the right set of people together in a room for a deep analysis of race, power, and white supremacy.

Yet we have to start the process somewhere (and, like it or not, that process is really best started in a place–not on a blog).

Fortunately, one promising answer can be found within the very stuff of this movement: food itself. More specifically, the way that social capital is generated by the growing, preparing, and eating of food. Several participants of the subgroup shared insights into how simple, deliberate community meals are used in their community to create spaces for dialogue and relationship-building. The Detroit folks recalled that their community’s dismantling racism workshops were, in fact, an idea that germinated in the course of a series of dinners among the movement’s leaders.

And so our Dismantling Racism subgroup of the Food Justice People’s Movement Assembly at the 2010 US Social Forum concluded with the presentation of what some may consider a “radical notion”: that we should gather people together in our communities to collaboratively prepare food, eat the food, and talk about the food.

Personally, I was energized and encouraged by this experience; after all, the DC Food For All launched 9 months ago in this very way. Relationships forged in the course of these early meals continue to bear fruit today. So I’m sharing the text of the proposal forged in Detroit here in hopes that we can experiment with these accessible, social, and political community-building meals here in DC.

A proposal for dismantling racism: Let’s eat together

{Click to read the full post.}

Posted by Greg Bloom | July 28th, 2010

The Social Forum — which convened in Detroit just last month — “is a movement building process… [that] provides spaces to learn 
from each other’s experiences and struggles, share our analysis of the problems 
our communities face, build relationships, and align with our international 
brothers and sisters to strategize how to reclaim our world.” It’ll be another three years before the US Social Forum convenes again, but in the meantime the process of the Social Forum is ongoing — as people from different movements, backgrounds and regions continue to deliberate and act upon solutions to the 
economic and ecological crisis.

An essential component of this process are People’s Movement Assemblies (PMA). PMAs are gatherings of people (25, 250 or more) that come together to collectively identify community issues, discuss solutions, and commit to actions.

Before the USSF2010 in Detroit, the Greater DC Social Forum (organized largely by attendees of USSF2007 in Atlanta) convened a DC People’s Movement Assembly. The Greater DC Social Forum will now convene another DC-area People’s Movement Assembly on August 7th, at 11AM at Plymouth Congregational UCC (5301 N Capitol Street NE). Attendees of USSF2010 will share the experience and ideas that they brought back from Detroit — however, this event is open to anyone who wants to work towards a better greater DC. (You can RSVP on Facebook here.)

At the pre-Detroit People’s Movement Assembly here in DC, some attendees had conversations about food justice issues—but there was not yet a PMA group self-organized around the subject. Well I am pleased to report that the signs of food justice movements across the country are strong! The challenges we face are great, but so are our opportunities. (I previously blogged about food sovereignty in Detroit here.) The USSF2010 Food Justice PMA assembled a diverse and exciting set of people, ideas, and proposals — consolidating it all into one statement to be shared with the broader Social Forum.

So, with hope that food justice/sovereignty will become an active thread of the Greater DC Social Forum process, I’m happy to share the Food Sovereignty People’s Movement Assembly resolution below. Let’s consider this document as we continue our conversation on August 7th and beyond.

Statement from the People’s Movement Assembly on Food Sovereignty, US Social Forum 2010

Over a half-century ago, Mahatma Gandhi led a multitude of Indians to the sea to make salt—in defiance of the British Empire’s monopoly on this resource critical to people’s diet. The action catalyzed the fragmented movement for Indian independence and was the beginning of the end for Britain’s rule over India. The act of “making salt” has since been repeated many times in many forms by people’s movements seeking liberation, justice and sovereignty: Cesar Chavez, Nelson Mandela, and the Zapatistas are just a few of the most prominent examples. Our food movement— one that spans the globe—seeks food sovereignty from the monopolies that dominate our food systems with the complicity of our governments. We are powerful, creative, committed and diverse. It is our time to make salt.

A movement for food sovereignty – the people’s democratic control of the food system, the right of all people to healthy, culturally appropriate food produced through ecologically sound and sustainable methods, and their right to define their own food and agriculture systems - is building from every corner of the globe.

{Read more below}

Posted by Maureen Linke | July 26th, 2010

[DC Food For All featured the Ward 8 Farmers Market last week, and this week bring you Maureen Linke's multimedia slideshow. See more at her website. —ed]

The Ward 8 Farmers Market (1310 Southern Avenue SE) is a community and local farmer-based grassroots market formed as a response to inadequate healthy food choices in Southeast D.C. and as a self-empowerment tool. The goal of the market is to help members of the community eat fresher, more natural and nutritious foods, and adopt healthier lifestyles for their long-term benefit as well as their children, families, and society. Organizers John Gloster and Virginia Major discuss how the market got started and its community impact. Click here to view a map of the market’s two locations.

Posted by shannonbshea | July 14th, 2010

Ecolocity DC, a local community sustainability/food group, is holding a workshop on July 20 that draws on ancient traditions and yet is still socially relevant today.  Seed saving is as old as agriculture, and yet large corporations are not allowing farmers both here in the U.S. and in the developing world to save their seeds.  [...]