Archive for the ‘Organizations’ Category

Posted by Erin Garnaas-Holmes | October 8th, 2010

[Cross-posted from Beyond Bread.]

Bread for the City’s new and upcoming Northwest Center Expansion is chock-full of exciting upgrades for our services, but one thing about which I am personally the most excited is our upcoming Green Roof, which will be built right on the top of our new building!

Green roofs are roofs that are covered with a layer of soil and some kind of plant life. Not only do they look cool, but they also bring all kinds of environmental and financial benefits. The soil and roots absorb rainwater that would otherwise run off the roof, carrying sediment and junk into the city’s already overloaded stormwater and sewage systems. The plants on the roof absorb sunlight, and the soil insulates the building, which reduces heating and cooling costs and extends the lifespan of the roof. The garden also reflects less sunlight back into the atmosphere than a normal roof, which reduces our input to the urban heat island effect.

I haven’t even gotten to the best part yet: Bread for the City’s new green roof will include a vegetable garden! Original plans for the roof included just sedums (sturdy, low-growth plants), but as the expansion moved ahead alongside our Nutrition Initiative, we started thinking about whether we could grow edible things. Upon consultation with DC Greenworks, we realized that our building’s plans could support the additional weight of a vegetable garden, and the prospect of growing food on top of a food pantry was just too enticing to pass up.

So! Bread for the City is about to begin construction on the first large-scale roof top agriculture project (that we know of) in the DC region.

The 3,500 square foot green roof will feature between 40 and 60 raised beds growing a seasonal variety of fruits and vegetables. The plants will be anchored in an 8 inch soil base, specially blended for the elevated environment, atop layers of drainage, protection, and filter fabrics. A team of volunteers and green roof specialists will tend to the crops, ensuring a healthy yield for Bread for the City’s constituents.

Check out more pictures of the construction progress here!

While the volume of food harvested from this “intensive” rooftop will not compare to the thousands of pounds of produce we acquire through our gleaning program, we expect that this garden will serve its own unique purpose.

We’ll quote Sherita Evans, talking about our Southeast Center’s rooftop container garden: “We lack these kinds of green spaces and educational places here in the community. 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.”

We know that addressing the complex needs of our community will require a multifaceted, holistic approach, and this is another opportunity to build a vision of a city in which all people have access to the resources and space they need to live lives of dignity and respect.

We will not just be planting a garden — we will also be using the space to teach workshops on nutrition, growing one’s own food, and maybe even basic botany. In partnership with City Blossoms (which operates the Marion Street Garden directly behind Bread for the City), DC Greenworks and other organizations, we will invite volunteers, clients and community members to join us on our roof to help maintain it and to learn about growing vegetables.

And we need your help to make this rooftop garden a reality. DC Greenworks estimates that the garden will cost $50,000 to build, and $15,000 a year to maintain — not cheap, but we belive it will be worthwhile for a space with such transformative potential.

Will you help us raise our first installment of funding by October 10, 2010? On that day, we’ll be hosting a massive block party to celebrate sustainable community projects like these. So in the spirit of 10.10.10, we want to raise: one hundred donations of ten dollars each, ten donations of one hundred dollars each, and one donation of ONE THOUSAND DOLLARS. Will you help? Join us today by giving to:

http://www.breadforthecity.org/RooftopGarden

Posted by Allison Burket | October 5th, 2010

Last Monday, DC Food For All gathered for our monthly community meal and workshop at the Center for Green Urbanism in downtown Ward 7. Our host, Dennis Chestnut, the Executive Director of Groundwork Anacostia, gave us an overview of Groundwork’s programming, as well as a tour the newly-opened Center.

Dennis’ organization, Groundwork Anacostia, is part of a larger network of “trusts” established across the country through Groundwork USA to help revitalize neighborhoods whose physical and social environments have undergone significant decline. Supported by the EPA’s Brownfields program, as well as the National Park Service, Groundwork aims to empower individuals in communities typically identified as under-served to engage in their community’s environmental, social, and economic revitalization, largely by identifying and converting brownfields (a term for abandoned facilities or unused land that may have been damaged or polluted by industrial use) into greenfields.For Dennis, who has been an environmental activist and community organizer since his days as a Boy Scout, “under-served” is a relative term. Despite Ward 7′s limited food access, public services, and commercial development, Dennis considers the small-town feel of the surrounding community and asset, and the abundance of open space as an opportunity to take some of the food access challenges of into their own hands.

Since formally launching in 2009, Groundwork Anacostia has helped establish numerous community gardens as well as a gardening club, now led by the senior community in Mayfair apartment complexes who lack land of their own to garden. As part of the 10.10.10 day of work and action around climate change, Groundwork will be launching a garden at the Mayfair Community Center, which Dennis hopes will also be the site of a farmers’ market accompanied by cooking classes and community events in the spring. The Community Center is located in a neighborhood between the river and the highway whose options for purchasing are currently limited to a convenience store.

Groundwork has been involved in numerous other efforts, such as lead the calls for the Benning Library across the street from the center to be renovated into a green building. Now a LEED-silver buidling, this library is the first DC public facility with a green roof. Groundwork will also work to ensure the 12-acre site of a nearby Pepco power plant that is scheduled to come offline within the next couple of years, will be remediated for public use, rather than sold to developers.

Groundwork was also instrumental in establishing the site for our evening’s meal: The Center for Green Urbanism – a “green business incubator” that acts as model and a hub for sustainable living and green enterprise in Ward 7. With an art gallery featuring reused and recycled materials, offices for rent for small businesses, meeting spaces for community groups and organizations, and a green interior design that includes everything from low-flow fixtures to solar shade window treatments, Dennis hopes the center can serve as place where folks can come and learn everything they need to know about living sustainably. The center has also hosted youth volunteer and employment programs involving the neighboring Fort Mahan park. During our tour of the renovated house originally built in 1926 and located at the edge of, we also got to admire the stellar views of downtown DC from its back porch.

The Center will be having its grand opening on October 15, formally launching its art gallery and “ReCREATE” exhibit. In the meantime, DC Food For All was grateful for its hospitality and fabulous water filtration system (“best water in the district,” Dennis promises). We shared fresh-baked bread and muffins, homemade lentil salad, plum dip, and ricotta spread, and discussed upcoming events – the 10.10.10 global work party, as well as meetings about the FEED DC Act, legislation introduced this summer. A public hearing on the Act will take place October 18, preceded by public working groups.

Join DC Food For All at any and all of these upcoming events – especially the 10.10.10 work day at Mayfair Community Center (3744 1/2 Hayes Street N.E.) Volunteers will help build build raised beds, lay soil, and learn about community gardening techniques and strategies. They need 15-20 volunteers to get down and dirty. The action will be from 9am-12pm, followed by rides back to Bread for the City NW for the Sustainable Food Block Party! (Learn more here)

For more on the Center for Green Urbanism, visit its website or contact Dennis Chestnut at Dchestn@msn.com.

Posted by Jeffrey Wankel | September 14th, 2010

Last month, Northwest Current correspondent Teke Wiggen followed Vince Hill, Jeffery Wankel and 30 volunteers into the heat of the fields of Parker Farms in Colonial Beach, Virginia to learn about our Glean for the City program.

Now in its second year, Glean for the City has become an essential part of our food pantry — enabling us to provide free, fresh produce to nearly 5,000 households each month. In fact, it’s been packing our pantry pretty much to the brim — and yet there’s still acres of food left untouched out there. (See our recent photos here.)

So we’re trying to figure out how to rescue even more. That starts by just giving it away more quickly. So now our NW food pantry is putting out a variety of freshly picked produce for anyone to take home–even if they don’t participate in our food program. Seriously, these bins are just set out there, and people can come and pick their fill. All we ask is that they promise to eat what they take — and enjoy.

Since the Northwest Current is only in PDF form, we’re sharing the full text of the article with you below.

Gleaning Crews Aim to Feed the Hungry
By Teke Wiggin, NW Current, August 11 2010

“Go deep!” yells a girl in a white tank top as she chucks three ears of corn in rapid succession toward a man stooped over a crate behind a row of stalks. The man springs upright, deftly grabbing each ear as it hurtles through the air. Laughing to himself, he snaps off the stalk butts and peels the thick outer husks. He begins to drop the ears into a crate lying at his feet but pauses and turns his head toward the girl. “You’re not checking these, Ashley!” he shouts. Ashley shakes her head and prepares to launch another salvo, scooping up ears from the tilled soil and snapping off others from trimmed stalks. On a sweltering Saturday, the two volunteers, along with about 30 others, are scouring Parker Farms cornfields in Oak Grove, Va., to harvest leftover crops for the food-salvaging program known as Glean for the City.

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 Caitlin Krieck | August 13th, 2010

[Cross-posted from Beyond Bread]

Communities east of the Anacostia River suffer from an infamous shortage of grocery stores, and here at Bread for the City we’re doing our part to counteract that lack: we’ve made our food pantry a lot more like the shopping experience.

We’ve previewed this new project on Beyond Bread before: in A Week of Choice, food pantry coordinator Jeffrey Wankel told you that, “after two successful dry-runs, Client Choice…went live for an entire week at our Southeast Center,” teaching us all a very important lesson. “Our clients love the ability to choose what food they receive from our pantry. This alone makes it a priority for us to implement Client Choice as a permanent feature of our food program.”

So we’re pleased to report that the Southeast pantry is now all Client Choice all the time–to the rave reviews of clients, staff and volunteers.

According to Food Coordinator Tony Weldon, the Client Choice program “sets us apart from a church basement, or something like that, even just with the visual effect,” he explains.

The pantry now boasts new shelving units and a layout that is carefully constructed to guide clients through the array of options. After a few months of tweaking, Jeff is proud to note that the “cycle time” (i.e., the average length of each client’s time checking in and receiving their bags) is now comparable to the previous system.

Most of all, the clients love it. “This is their words,” Tony said: “‘Wow! Ya’ll stepped your game up!”

Another positive side-effect of this new system: volunteers and clients actually get to know each other. “Client choice has opened the lines of communication..and there is noticeably more constructive feedback.” Volunteers are able to learn more about the clients they serve, and clients enjoy seeing familiar faces month after month.

Meanwhile, Client Choice has made our staff less busy. That may seem counterintuitive, since there are more decisions being made with every single bag we give out. And yet, prior to Choice, Tony and his food pantry staff were responsible not only for distributing bags to clients, but also for supervising the volunteers who stuffed bags. Managing both sides — on top of the day-to-day logistics of orders and deliveries and so on — stretched pantry staff to their limits. With Client Choice, clients pack their own bags, while volunteers guide them from station to station. It’s all one process. Tony and his staff still oversee pantry operations, but they’re left with more time to chat with clients, get to know volunteers, and tinker with big-picture aspects of the system.

Posted by Vince Hill | July 20th, 2010

[Cross-posted from Beyond Bread.]

Aaaand we’re gleaning again!

On Saturday, more than a dozen Bread for the City volunteers drove down to Parker Farms in Colonial Beach, VA. Some of our volunteers were BFC donors; others found out about the project from an NPR story about it last year; and still others learned about it from the DC Food For All. All of them were ready to roll up their sleeves and come to the rescue of the farm’s surplus sweet corn.

There was more out there than we’d expected. We gleaned just one acre out of 100s that were available to us, and left at the end with more than 1,700lbs of corn in tow. Farmer Rod Parker met us in the fields, and at the end of the day he told me, “my only complaint is that you didn’t bring enough bins.”

Why is so much corn left in the farm’s field? Here are some reasons:

1) Human error: laborers inevitably miss a certain amount of corn that is market-ready and perfect. Farmers often opt not to pay for a second pass through the fields, but are happy for volunteers to come do it.

2) Undersized/under ripe: corn that is too small to sell is left behind, even if it is edible. Shoppers are so picky that almost every type of produce has size minimums and shape requirements. Under-ripe corn is also left behind. It’s not as tasty or filling, but still edible — and often ripened by the time we get to it.

Posted by Caitlin Krieck | July 12th, 2010

lean

Common Good City Farm

Over the past year, Bread for the City has worked to expand our gleaning program to provide fresh, local produce to our clients. We are kicking off this season with a Glean for the City event on Saturday, July 17th and we need your help! We will travel to Parker Farms in Colonial Beach, VA. Join us in the fields, and help collect more than a ton of delicious sweet corn for our food pantry. The event will last from 9am to 2pm, including driving time. For more information, please contact Vince Hill.
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After weeks of unforgettable heat, the day dawned fresh and inviting, just the type of weather we needed for our first ever client gleaning project at Common Good City Farm. Sure enough, the day turned out to be educational, delicious, and fun.

Common Good City Farm, located about a half a mile from BFC’s NW center, is a neighborhood farm dedicated to raising awareness about food and food justice in DC. In addition to selling some of their produce to local restaurants, CGCF runs programs and workshops for low-income volunteers and school-aged children, as well as the curious, casual gardener. Several clients expressed interest in Common Good’s “Green Tomorrows” program, which provides a bag of fresh produce to low-income residents in exchange for two or more hours per week of instructional, hands-on work on the farm.
Spencer Ellsworth and the other staff at Common Good City Farm generously took time to share their knowledge of urban gardening, basic plant care and food preparation.

Posted by Julie Curti | May 4th, 2010

By Tasha Askew, National Hunger Fellow, and Julie Curti, Acting Deputy Director, USDA Center for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships

What better way to end the day than by uncovering local food powerhouses in the Nation’s Capital! On Wednesday, April 21, 2010, the USDA and HHS Centers for Faith-based and Neighborhood Partnerships convened to visit two jewels located in Washington, DC: Common Good City Farm of Ledroit Park and Healthy Solutions of Anacostia.