Dishing the Organic Dirt in Richmond: (an innovative community initiative) ******************************************* What do you do if someone needs access to a productive gardening plot but they have nothing suitable nearby? Simple. You bring the garden to them! Announcing the RFSS entry into this year’s Garden for Good competition. Each year, Nature’s Path Foods offers three $15,000 grants to community organizations that want to create innovative urban agricultural projects that fulfill their community’s need for organic food. About the Project: ______________ This year’s RFSS proposal is called Dishing the Organic Dirt. We want to build 50 mobile garden boxes can be brought into high need locations throughout Richmond where gardening can provide a supply of organic, fresh fruits and vegetables to low-income and new immigrant families. The mobile boxes will be assembled from kits designed by a BC company called Shifting Growth. The concept is elegant and practical. You start with a shipping pallet, install risers on it to create a planter box, and then fill the box with organic soil and plant whatever crops you desire. The photo sequence at the bottom of this post illustrates how this is done. The Benefits of the Project: ______________________ - Access to a mobile garden site will allow gardeners to learn and develop the skills needed to grow organic, fresh fruits and vegetables, which enables families who struggle to make ends meet to have better access to good food. - Organic community gardening reduces social isolation, which is a major issue in Richmond, particularly among the city’s recent immigrants who often struggle to integrate into their new community. - Because they can be moved, these garden boxes offer the flexibility to address multiple communities that are in need (as identified by previous Richmond Food Security Society research). - Mobile garden sites can be transformed into permanent garden sites if the demand is high enough, thus enhancing both the number of organic gardens in Richmond and the level of awareness of issues that arise from our conventional food system. We need your support to win the grant! ********************************************* The successful grant proposals are determined by the voting, so we’re asking for your vote. Each day, you can vote for our proposal on the contest website: naturespath.appbuilder.spredfast/fbcontests/showentry/Gardens-For-Good-1/141801 Voting starts on Sunday, June 22 @ 12:00 pm and ends sixteen days later on July 07, 2014. Last year, the contest was hosted through Facebook, but this year it is being run by Spredfast, so the voting process should be much easier. Exact details about voting will be updated the moment the contest opens. But for now, you can read more about the project by following the link above. Last year we didn’t win one of the $15,000 grants but we came soooo close we could almost taste it. This year, with your support, we think we have a great proposal that will bring organic gardens to areas of Richmond that desperately need it. Please help us make that a reality. Thanks from the staff at RFSS.
Posted on: Sat, 21 Jun 2014 06:15:44 +0000
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