Welcome. The project started from a placement at university. Looking at the situation of school gardens in Thunder Bay, Ontario. There are many pieces of the puzzle and eco-justice, social justice, food security and education all find a home at my Blog.

Friday, March 25, 2011

Community and empowering children to be food secure.

In many of my blog postings I have written about how to increase parental involvement in schools and the community importance of school gardens. I don't think I've ever looked at what community actually is. This concept has fascinated me for quite a while. The idea of what is community and where belonging comes on that spectrum.

So, What is community? Community is a term that can mean different things to different people. Community can be a term for a place, a group of people, individuals with similar interests, people with the same profession, people with common ownership. There are probably plenty more examples.

In terms of community and school gardening. Gardening has the power to empower neighbourhood, raising awareness of environmental issues and food security issues. The idea of empowerment as a social process is to make neighbourhoods stronger, giving the people a voice of strength and independence. Gardening gives a community a sense of self-reliance.

There are many examples of how gardening can increase capacity of a community. Many people work in this area of helping people in neighbourhoods to help themselves in learning how to grow their own food. The idea  of growing a garden and feeding oneself is such a powerful concept to me. I have never known a year where I haven't been able to grow my own vegetables. A wonderful documentary was made at a school in northern Manitoba on their gardening project and how it has impacted the community. You can see a trailer for this movie on you tube at http://www.youtube.com/user/meljohnsonschool The children at this school use their own homes as their garden and their teacher visits them to teach them about growing the foods. I've already written a short blog about the project at this school. It constantly amazes me how communities in the north can empower themselves and this is a perfect example.

The idea of gardening as a tool to empower a community is important. The purpose of empowerment is to increase the power, wealth and capacity of a community. To grow food for themselves, a community is doing all three and becoming food secure and food aware. Teaching children about food through the school curriculum gives the children an amazing opportunity. There is a sense of wonder that should be nurtured in the garden. Children should be given the tools to learn how to grow their food, to know where it comes from and how it is grown.

There seems so much in the news right now, particularly with Michelle Obama's Let's Move campaign with their garden at the White House. Schools seem at the forefront of the new empowerment process on obesity and health.

The idea of food security and empowering children to have the knowledge of how to grow their own food makes me realize the possibilities we, as adults, can make real for students. The environmental crisis is real, as are the issues that we have around obesity and health.

How can we make school  gardens a reality? The more I read, the more I realize just how advocacy in this area can help. Perhaps it will take schools doing research to bring to their school boards, or maybe it might take a few schools who have gardens to get together to enable workshops. I like the idea of Pay It Forward, whereby children who have gardens at schools become mentors to those who wish to learn how to garden. They can get their whole families involved in this way. Children are so smart and can be so passionate about gardening that they become, in themselves mentors to others.

I've thought long and hard about sustainability of gardening and maybe by having children as ambassadors for their own gardens, adults might finally catch on and agree to start a project in a new school.

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