National Night Out, Make a Difference Day In

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Lots of good stories on last night’s night out (although some got rained out and moved down)

Neighbors gather to celebrate National Night Out

San Antonio Express – Eva Ruth Moravec, Valentino Lucio – Allie Hostetter looked around the Calvary Temple parking lot as hundreds gathered to watch a local elementary school choir, grabbed a bite to eat and chatted with friends. For Hostetter and the El Chaparral-Fertile Valley Neighborhood Association, Tuesday’s inaugural National Night Out event was a complete success. “We’re really proud of all the neighbors, businesses and everyone else that have helped us,” Hostetter said. “We didn’t expect this.”

Communities gather during ‘Night Out’

Brazosport Facts – Jones Creek officials were “ecstatic” Tuesday after more than 100 adults and their children attended the city’s first National Night Out event. The front lawn of City Hall was packed with residents talking with Jones Creek marshal’s officers, volunteer firefighters, Brazoria County Sheriff Charles Wagner and Pct. 4 Constable Fred Kanter.

We met people last night from all sides of every one of these hills in our little community. And we are indeed a community, with just a few roads winding around all these hills, some houses visible from the roads, others tucked way back and hidden in the woods. Honestly, I didn’t realize that so many families were in here to begin with– so there are more houses hidden by the woods and the trees that I imagined.

More NNO news here.

Lots of buzz on Make a Difference Day

In the old news, and the new news. If you need ideas, try these: Project Ideas for Make a Difference Day, 77 ways to build community in your neighborhood, 50 ways to serve in your neighborhood, and 31 ways to create sustainable neighborhoods.

And in other news of good people doing good …

Neighborhood Harvest shares bounty

Mail Tribune – Sarah Lemon – The Ashland couple, who usually share the bounty with nearby families, decided to expand their definition of “neighbor.” Neighborhood Harvest, an organization founded in Ashland last year, picked all the plums free of charge. After the group’s volunteers kept a portion of the 30-pound harvest, local food banks received about a third, and a third was set aside for sale at the Rogue Valley Growers and Crafters Market. “At this point, we’re totally funded by the fruit sales,” says Josh Shupack, who manages the program.

Huber Heights family devoted to volunteerism

Dayton Daily News – Beth Anspach – When Brooke Davidson of Huber Heights was just 5 years old, she began an outreach to those less fortunate that continues to this day. Now 14, Brooke and her entire family are devotees of volunteerism and believe that “giving back,” should be the center of everyone’s lives. “I went with my mom to help homeless people when I was 5,” Brooke said, “And we ended up producing a play to help bring attention to homelessness.”

NORCs: Unique Havens for an Aging America

Yahoo! News – Philip Moeller – Lillian Miceli owns her home, has no plans to leave, and looks forward to many more good years. But, at 89, with knees “that are shot,” she needs a lot of help to remain independent. Fortunately, a program in the western suburbs of St. Louis sends volunteer students from Washington University in St. Louis to tend her yard. Pete Pozefsky, a Boeing engineer who lives in the area and volunteers for the program, stops by to help her solve a computer problem, then sticks around to move some heavy boxes. Other volunteers periodically assist with physically demanding chores, and staffers of this unique program provide social and community support services.

Community turns out to support local farm, and other stories

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Community turns out to support local farm through lean year

Lincoln Journal – Raphaella Cruz – Laughter, bluegrass music and the sweet smell of flowers drifted across Blue Heron Organic Farm on Saturday during the farm’s Fall Festival and Fundraiser. Intermittently pouring and sprinkling rain didn’t seem to have any effect on visitors who picked bouquets of flowers in the labyrinth, joined the hayride around the fields, and shopped for fresh vegetables while mingling with friends and neighbors at the farm stand.

Single mom gets first Menlo Park Habitat for Humanity home

San Jose Mercury News – Jessica Bernstein-Wax – The families, who were all on a waiting list for low-income housing in Menlo Park, must put in 500 hours of labor, called sweat equity, in exchange for a zero-interest mortgage and no down payment on the properties. The initiative revitalizes rundown or abandoned buildings and makes home ownership possible for people who otherwise wouldn’t be able to realize that dream, organizers say. “It’s about rebuilding the community — putting families back into the community and letting them grow,” VanHook said at the ceremony.

New arrival: community-supported kitchen

OregonLive.com – Ivy Manning – Just as we were getting acquainted with the idea of community-supported agriculture, or CSAs, a new alphabet soup of initials has cropped up in our locavore food scene: the CSK, or community-supported kitchen. “The idea is something like a CSA, but we go one step further and use local food to make nutrient-rich, prepared foods for those who want to eat well, but don’t have the time or know-how,” says Tressa Yellig, founder of 3-month-old Salt, Fire & Time CSK in the Buckman neighborhood.

Eighteen years later, Citizens on Patrol credited with reducing crime throughout Fort Worth

Fort Worth Star Telegram – Mike Lee – “Our crime has gone down significantly because of the amount of people patrolling,” she said. The first class of 105 COPs volunteers from 11 neighborhoods was trained in 1991. At the same time, police began focusing on community policing and assigned liaison officers known as neighborhood patrol officers to each part of town. By the mid-1990s, there were COPs programs in 120 neighborhoods; today 214 have them.

Touched by the Wayland Angels

Wayland Town Crier – Susan L. Wagner – In 2002, when Wayland’s Jean Seiden was being treated for breast cancer, her friends and neighbors set up a meal chain and delivered food to her home on a regular basis. Not long after, another town resident, Pam Washek, was found to have a tumor in her shoulder, and Seiden offered to set up a similar food chain for her family. Unfortunately, Seiden lost her battle three years ago at the age of 48. But the synergy between her and Washek still flourishes in the Wayland Angels, an organization the two women established to provide others with the same assistance they had received while undergoing their own cancer treatments.

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Local farmers reclaiming the valley’s rich agricultural history

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Excerpted from Growing a Revolution by Stett Holbrook in metroactive

Meghan Cole, manager of the Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale, sees urban farming as part of a larger movement for change. Photograph by Felipe Buitrago

Meghan Cole, manager of the Full Circle Farm in Sunnyvale. Photograph by Felipe Buitrago

Like much of Silicon Valley, Full Circle Farm was once an orchard, but the rows of Santa Rosa plum trees were plowed under when the orchard was in full blossom one spring in the early 1960s. The Santa Clara Unified School District bought the land and used it as an informal athletic field.

When the school district later considered selling the undeveloped parcel, it was valued at $60 million. That’s a huge sum of money for a cash-strapped district, but thanks to grassroots community support and former school board member Teresa O’Neill, who championed the idea of a community farm early on, the district saw another use for the land and decided not to sell out to developers.

“To me that’s the most amazing part of the story,” says Liz Snyder, interim executive director of Sustainable Community Gardens, the nonprofit group that runs the farm. “In Silicon Valley, where land was being gobbled by development, that was a minor miracle.”

The school district now leases the land to Sustainable Community Gardens. The organization also runs the 1-acre Charles Street Garden, which it leases from the city of Sunnyvale. The first tree planted at Full Circle Farm was a plum tree in honor of O’Neill and the orchard that once stood there. The farm has become many things to many people. Students get their hands dirty as they learn about the source of their food and what makes it grow. Last year, 1,200 students spent time on the farm.

With the planned construction of an on-site kitchen, Snyder, an earnest, soft-spoken woman, hopes to incorporate food grown on the farm into the school district’s food-service program. That would allow them to unplug, at least in part, from the national school-lunch program’s notoriously inferior menu of frozen heat-and-serve meals. She wants to replace 50 percent of what the school cafeterias now serve with produce from the farm.

The farm also provides fresh produce to the community at its thrice-weekly farm stand and community-supported agriculture (CSA) program. Local restaurants buy some of the produce. In addition, the farm attracts a wide range of volunteers who simply want to learn to grow vegetables and literally reap what they sow. The farm and its half-acre garden where schools and local residents can experiment and plant on a smaller scale has proved so popular that there are often more volunteers than work.

“Instead of going out to fast food, I can I cook with my own food that I learn to grow here,” says Kristal Caidoy, 20, a De Anza College student and volunteer.

Snyder studied the relationship between community food systems, exposure to food-marketing messages and childhood nutrition at Oxford University. For her, the farm and the support it has received are part of a national shift in the way we think about food: “I think we’re absolutely at a tipping point where urban agriculture is going to be more commonplace. … I think it’s a change in awareness at the community level and [a desire] to know where your food comes from.”

(more…)

Communal gardening takes root in valley

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Patches of green are sprouting up across the arid desert as Coachella Valley residents join a nationwide trend of community gardening.

Following in the footsteps of Palm Desert, which opened its first of two community gardens in 1999, Indian Wells is poised to give its residents the opportunity to get their hands dirty, too.

Valley schools also are trying to plant the seed with local youth — Agua Caliente Elementary School in Cathedral City started a garden this year and Desert Ridge Academy in Indio is working on cultivating a program for its students as well.

“As both the health community and consumers become more aware of food and its effect on health it’s going to be a real popular issue,” said Glenda Humiston, state director for the United States Department of Agriculture Rural Development.

Indian Wells Mayor Larry Spicer announced in July the city’s interest in creating its own community garden similar to Palm Desert’s. Since then, 60 residents have contacted Indian Wells City Hall about participating, officials said.

“Part of our council’s goal is to provide a variety of venues and activities in our city, and that’s just one more to be considered,” Spicer said. “There’s a social element to this where it can turn into a get-together-with-your-neighbors-and-friends kind of place.”

Nardozzi said community gardens have proven to be great community builders that can strengthen a neighborhood socially and even bring up property values.

“It can start out with a community garden, but soon, cities start holding events and festivals or begin beautification projects, too,” Nardozzi said.

That said, the top five reasons people opt to grow their own food include a desire to save money on their food bills and to ensure the food they eat is safe, according to the National Gardening Association.

“We’ve seen this happen before: When the economy goes down, people become concerned with their livelihood,” said Nardozzi. “Plus, there’s psychological aspect to it. It helps people feel like, ‘I’m doing something to help myself out here.’”

Read the full story: Communal gardening takes root in valley | MyDesert.com | The Desert Sun by Mariecar Mendoza

Veggie Kids bond with nature, neighbors

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BONNIE WELLER / Staff Photographer Kalib Lee harvesting vegetables from the garden on 55th Street between Haverford Avenue and Line Street on Thursday. He and other Veggie Kids offer their produce to neighbors in West Philadelphia's Haddington section for $1 a bag.

With the day’s harvest, the youths known as the Veggie Kids travel door-to-door in their West Philadelphia community, hustling sun gold cherry tomatoes, swiss chard, cabbage, and string beans.

On this afternoon, Fallon Hook, a regular customer, buys a bag of tomatoes. A culinary student, Hook, 28, the mother of five, plans to make a salad. But more than a healthy ingredient, the fresh produce represents “something good for the community,” she says. “These kids help a lot around here.”

The Veggie Kids program, in which children 5 to 16 grow, harvest, clean, package, and distribute fresh produce, was piloted in North Philadelphia last year, delivering nearly a thousand pounds of vegetables and fruits to 22 struggling families at no charge.

This season, sponsored by the local nonprofit Urban Tree Connection, the initiative expanded to a community garden in West Philadelphia’s Haddington section, where children offer their harvest to neighbors at $1 a bag.

“Anything to help the children,” says their next customer, Audrey Brown, 80, a widow, holding her newly purchased tomatoes and string beans. “And it’s so convenient. Sometimes it’s hard to get to the store.”

In the Haddington Homes public housing development, most of the 150 families have incomes of less than $10,000 a year, according to Jan Pasek, spokesman for the Philadelphia Housing Authority. Only 18 percent of the residents are employed.

So far this year, the kids have harvested almost 500 pounds of produce, serving 23 Haddington families.

via Veggie Kids bond with nature, neighbors | Philadelphia Inquirer | 09/08/2009. By Kia Gregory, Inquirer Staff Writer