Mission Impossible

One of the Big Questions that has come up at HOPE Gardens this summer is a relatively simple, but incredibly important one-- what is the garden's mission?

I remember learning in middle school English classes about thesis statements. Before this lesson, all written assignments were "reports," not essays or papers. These reports, usually book reports, we were basically instructed to regurgitate information about what we had read or learned, only in a more brief, condensed form. But thesis statements changed everything. All of a sudden, I couldn't just throw out ideas onto the page with reckless abandon. They had to be cohesive; every sentence I wrote had to be relevant, such that I could trace a clear line back, to my thesis.

Well, something I've come to learn about organizations, all of them really but particularly ones trying to advance social justice in the world, is that they also must have a thesis. This usually takes the form of a mission statement. I didn't realize how completely essential that was until I became involved in HOPE Gardens. As an organization, I feel we do a lot of great and important things. But we also try to be everything for everybody, and it's just not possible. By trying to be a transitional employment program, educational space for sustainable agriculture, homeless outreach program, and successful business, we've really only accomplished the undesirable goal of being stressed out and spread too thin. A mission statement streamlines an organization, forcing it to spend its energies and resources solely on those projects which directly contribute to the overall purpose.

I think we all realize we need a strong, clearly-defined mission statement, though it's hard to pare down when all of the options and potential directions are so exciting. But I look forward to having that conversation as the fall semester resumes; I know we'll have a lot to talk about!

A Thick Sticky Blanket

That is what the air has felt like in North Carolina for the past two weeks. Occasional afternoon showers give us a slight reprieve, but most days are an unending misery of heat and sweat. But the vegetables are still growing, and so gardening marches onward! Some of my favorite vegetables-- tomatoes, eggplants, and peppers are reaching maturity in abundance. HOPE Gardens has recently started collaborating with Carolina Campus Community Garden, which distributes all of its produce to the house cleaning staff at UNC, who are the lowest-income workers at the school. 

Speaking of Carolina Campus Community Garden, I just interviewed the garden manager for my research project, which is finally gaining momentum after I received IRB approval. I will be visiting several more community gardens/urban farms in the upcoming week; I can't wait! 

Planning, Patience and Purpose

Hi There!

I have been a pretty non-existent blogger, haven't I? Well, it's because I haven't actually begun collecting data yet. But, I have been working on what I've come to realize may be the most important factor of a research project and it's success-- planning.

Of course, I had to submit a proposal outlining my research question and methodology and why I wanted to do this project before I even got approved/funded, but even that is vague in comparison to the extreme detail needed for a good project, not to mention IRB approval. Right away I realized that the scope of my research question was far too broad for me to handle on my own. I needed to get specific and think about the core purpose of researching food access. What did I want to know about it? The connection between low-income and food access is already pretty clear and has been researched quite a bit. Obviously, if a family has less money, less time, and less knowledge about healthy food and where to get it, their nutrition and access to fresh fruits and vegetables (which is how I'm choosing to define healthy food) becomes severely limited. So I didn't want to find out what everyone already knows. I want my project to be useful in some way, to actually be leading to some physical change that can address the problem. And since I am working at HOPE Gardens this summer, I am part of a community space full of produce and enthusiastic students and volunteers interested in helping and learning about food justice.

But there are very few people from the homeless and low-income communities HOPE tries to serve that actually participate in the regular activities of the garden. So I realized I wanted to redirect the focus of my project somewhat. My question now is not, Why do you not have access to healthy food (although that is still something I am looking into), but How would you change it? Or, more specifically, What are the main barriers to getting fresh fruits and vegetables and what would induce people from the community to participate in a community garden to improve their access?

I had a great conversation with a friend who had also done a community-based research project in Chapel Hill, last summer, about the idea of "community space." It's a term that's often tossed around in well-meaning student organizations, but it always seemed really vague to me. What is it? What does it do? The name suggests that it belongs to the "community," but who really is that? I thought about really successful collectives I had read about, food co-ops or community gardens or group living arrangements, and wondered what set them apart. It seemed to me that the issue of ownership was a constant factor in a collective's success or failure.

In America, we have private property. Most see it as one of our fundamental rights. We own houses and cars and businesses, and everything runs smoothly because we are each individually responsible for what's ours and how it's used. We've all probably heard about the Tragedy of the Commons, where a lack of distinct private ownership leads to selfishness of all parties and eventual destruction of whatever existed in the Commons, such as a pond for fishing or a field for grazing livestock. Yet in community gardens and similar spaces, this rigid line between owners and outsiders is blurred, purposefully. Ideally, a community garden belongs to everyone, and benefits everyone, should they choose to take advantage of it. It seems hard, however, to accommodate everyone's needs or desires and run a successful garden at the same time. How do community gardens deal with the potential clashes of culture, varying levels of knowledge, and differences of opinion? And how do they cultivate a sense of ownership among members of the community to begin with, so that everyone feels comfortable participating?

HOPE Gardens in it's early stages 

These are my new research questions, and I aim to tackle them, as soon as my application gets IRB approval!

Using Community Gardens to Address Inequitable Food Access among Low-Income Populations

For my project this summer, I aim to discover the underlying factors that cause inequitable food access among members of the Orange County, North Carolina community and how HOPE Gardens, a student-run community garden/urban farm in Chapel Hill, can most effectively address them. To tackle this question, I must first determine the extent to which members of the community lack access to healthful, nutritional food and evaluate the most common and significant causes of this inequity. I intend to use the Community-Based Research Fellowship to discover these causes through investigative community research and analysis of several factors’ contribution to inequitable food access—volume of healthful food vendors, ease of travel to food sources, and affordability of fresh food. I will also evaluate the garden’s current food production, community engagement, and effectiveness in delivering fresh produce to under-served population. My hope is to use this information to implement new ideas and improve programming at HOPE Gardens that will expand its reach to more people in the community and deepen its impact.

In order to accomplish this, I will survey the population to determine who has the least access to fresh food and establish relationships with community organizations that already serve low income groups such as the St. Joseph’s Bread Ministry, the Inter-Faith Council for Social Services, and the Orange County Partnership to End Homelessness, allowing me to leverage existing knowledge of food access issues in the area. Through interviewing community members about their perceived access to healthy food and whether they feel maintaining a healthy diet that includes fresh produce is affordable I will be able to get a sense of how HOPE Gardens can best serve the community. I will also determine food accessibility by assessing food prices for fresh produce and other nutritional staples in grocery stores and other food vendors and comparing these costs with incomes in the community, as well as evaluating the ease and convenience of physically getting to those vendors for the low-income community. Through my research I will also help to improve the services provided by HOPE Gardens by gaining a more thorough understanding of barriers such as cost and transportation that might prevent low income groups from participating. My hope is that this research will provide crucial information for future, sustainable planting choices that will make maximum impact on food access issues in Orange County.