Candles welcomed guests from Figueroa Street up to Tony’s home, where they were welcomed with local food and drinks, live music and good company. A seed bomb-production lab gave everyone a chance to try their hand at guerrilla-beautification. A resource wall that Jasmin made displayed the many assets our Summer of Solutions program is proud to have, and allowed guests to contribute their own resources, knowledge, skills and connections to the effort.

Everyone came wanting to know more about this new program and how they could learn more and get involved.

This was LA CAUSA Summer of Solutions’ premiere event. Our hello to the world. It was Friday, March 16th, 2012. Over the course of the night, upwards of two hundred people layered long sleeves and jackets to spend their evening celebrating and networking on a small patio overlooking downtown Los Angeles.

As one of the five organizers who comprise the LA SOS leadership team, I couldn’t be happier about the event. While an oncoming flu tempered my outward excitement, on the inside I was glowing as I watched new faces interacting with familiar ones. Partying with a conscience. Here were powerful connections being made; friendships that could mean the start of new ventures and collaboration on existing ones.

So I venture: why can’t we do this every weekend? If we’re going to drop a few bucks on a given weekend on some drinks and food, why not have it directly support a program that will give young people the skills and connections that will support them making change in their communities? Or any cause for that matter. I’ll take the warmth and curiosity of the people surrounding me last Friday over a glammed-out club–where I can’t hear anyone anyway–any day. Moreover, I had the honor to entertain with my band, Dylan Trees, and our partners in music for the night, The Withers.

Sharing music, raising some dough for a good cause, meeting new and interesting people–can a Friday night get much better? Not really. I’m excited for the next party. It’s not official, but yeah, we want this to happen again. And next time, it won’t be five people organizing, it will be a larger group of people all working together to organize, promote, set up, cover, take down, and move on to the next steps. All in an effort to bring a new program to Los Angeles that will continue to grow and help shape the future of this region.

Photos by Alex Kinnan.

We made a lot of seed bombs on Friday. Over the next few weeks, they’ll be tossed into vacant lots and fields around Los Angeles and start sprouting into beautiful fields of wild flowers. What I didn’t realize is that our event itself was a seed bomb. We threw in all the right ingredients, packed it into a condensed space, and now we grow. Glad to have you on board.

- Casey Wojtalewicz

Grand Aspirations is extremely pleased to announce that we received $60,000 in funding this week!

Here’s how:
Continue reading →

Click Here to Vote Now.  Click the “Click here to vote” link and Vote for “Health Justice in the Garden.”

Click Here to Sign up to Vote Daily.  Click continue to agree, fill in your email and get started!

Voting Results: At the end of the fourth day of voting, Summer of Solutions Hartford remains in close second place.  Voting results have shown that our supporters have been the most consistent in voting daily, but we have not yet achieved the number of voters reached by other organizations.  Reflecting this trend, we won the most votes on days 2 and 4 of voting, while the organization in first place won the most votes on days 1 and 3.

What does this mean? : We will continue to rely on our core of daily voters to support us by voting every day.    We are confident that by continuing our daily voting campaign, we can continue to pull in a steady number of votes.  We also plan to make a special effort this weekend, when we believe we will be able to reach more voters than a larger organization.

At the same time, we need to reach out to a larger audience.  We will continue our efforts to reach as many voters as possible, and we ask for your help.  If you are reading this and have not yet signed up to vote daily, there is still one week of voting left.  We also depend on your support to reach new voters.  While you can make a big impact for our campaign by enlisting others to sign up, you can also have a large effect by sending the voting link – healthjusticect.org/challenge-voting – to as many people as possible and encouraging them to vote for “Health Justice in the Garden.”

What we could do with $10,000:

1) Provide stipends to Program Leaders and Participants working Full-Time to bring community gardens and community programs to the Frog Hollow and surrounding neighborhoods.

2) Cover the construction costs of over over 60 raised wooden beds and over 2,000 Square Feet of Growing Space.

Grand Aspirations has just officially launched a webinar series for this May. This will be an opportunity for people interested in building a just, sustainable, community-based economy and doing it effectively to share and gain skills and insights they’ve gained through their experience. The Webinars Team is currently seeking proposals for this initial series of webinars. If you have an idea, please send in your proposal using this form by March 23. Webinar facilitators will receive up to 60% of the revenue from these webinars, so it’s a great strategy for personal resource generation as well as a way to get your ideas out there.

We are looking for people within the Grand Aspirations network and for people who have never heard of Grand Aspirations, and everyone in between, to offer webinars. If you know someone who might be interested, please pass on the opportunity! We are looking for people to present on the topics that interest them, but we have heard some particular interest in trainings on being an effective ally (particularly along race and class lines), tactics for de-escalating conflict, and fundraising. Is there anything you’d like to attend a webinar on? Let us know in the comments!

We are happy to announce that Summer of Solutions Hartford is a finalist in The  Health Justice CT Challenge.  The winner will be decided through an online vote and will receive a $10,000 grant from the CT Health Foundation to work towards establishing “equal opportunities for health to all Connecticut residents.”

It’s springtime in Connecticut, though the calendar insists it’s February. Summer of Solutions Hartford is planning our second summer of food justice work in Frog Hollow, Hartford. We have an excellent summer behind us and a million plans in the works for the next, but in the meantime I’ve been spending a lot of time at my kitchen table on this computer.

This image has been floating around Facebook for the past few weeks. I had to laugh when I saw it, because I had been sitting for 6 hours with a laptop, my phone, and a notepad- “organizing.” This particular day I was scheduling meetings with partners, emailing our participant application to community members, and fixing up our website- soshartford.wordpress.com. On days like this, it appears my “community organizing” is lacking some community.

When I’ve been working at my kitchen table so long that I don’t realize the sun has set- only that my papers have been getting harder to see- it is memories of that community and enthusiasm for our future work together that inspire me.

Memories like:

-Meeting our team of 2011 program participants for the first time at La Paloma Sabanera coffee shop in Hartford.

- Getting to the register to buy a cart full of seedlings and hearing “oh, you’re starting the garden in Hartford? We’re giving you all of this for free”

- The first time Nino, a five year old boy who lives next to el Jardín de Zion Street, came out to the garden to work with us and ran around with a wheelbarrow, which he called his “truck,” helping us fill raised beds.

- When Climate Summer visited and we ate home-cooked picnics on the front yard.

- Planting squash in a tire with Ramón who lived down the street, “it will be beautiful.”

- Wes teaching me how to maximize all the space in a 4×8 bed, and that your tomatoes won’t grow if you don’t talk to them enough.

- Playing Power Rangers with the kids during the summer camp we ran, and not knowing how to properly represent the yellow one.

- Holding a meeting of organizers and activists in our basement on a particularly hot day.

- A Hartford Courant photographer showing up at the garden during the heat wave “looking for people crazy enough to be outside.”

- During “Graffiti Day” of Art Week, when Javier showed Nino how to paint the Puerto Rican flag on their raised bed.

- Witnessing the secret musical talent of our garden neighbors at our open-mic potluck picnic.

- Drawing a “magical chalk garden” at the playground- featuring a bean stalk, jack, the giant, heart flowers, purple strawberries, and “car plants” during summer camp

- Playing Seedling Scavenger Hunt with neighborhood kids (celery is deceiving!)

- Talking to strangers on the sidewalk about our kale harvest and signing them up for plots on the spot.

- The last night of our summer, when everyone came out to eat dinner together in the garden at Alice-in-Wonderland-esque tables and our neighbor called the garden “a wonderland.”

So thanks, clever graphic, but I think what we do has a lot more community in it than you think. Sure, I have my fair share of desk hours, but it’s all to make those moments possible. As I plan for next summer, meet with potential partners, and talk up the program to applicants, I am encouraged by the potential of Summer of Solutions Hartford to bring people together, makeover vacant lots into flourishing gardens, and turn the tides of food justice in Hartford.

If you’re wondering, “say, what might the magical moments of SoS Hartford 2012 entail?” You should check out What’s New 2012: http://soshartford.wordpress.com/2012/02/15/whats-new-2012/ and apply to join us at http://grandaspirations.org/summer-of-solutions/apply2012/

First, let me introduce myself. My name is Maddy Dragich and I am currently teaching 10^th grade geometry in Stuttgart, Arkansas. I am originally from Arden Hills, MN, and I just graduated in May 2011 from the College of St. Benedict/St. John’s University (CSB/SJU). In college, I majored in Peace Studies and French. People are often confused by what it means to major in Peace Studies.. Well, let me give you a quick summary. To me and many of my peers, the field of Peace Studies is an in-depth exploration of the history of war and how our past can help us to prepare for peace in our future.

Now that I re-read that last sentence, I realize that you might be thinking that it sounds a bit idealistic… well in many respects you might be right. However, I would argue that without a bit of idealism, how could we attain the vision we want for the world? This question brings to mind a project that all senior Peace Studies majors were required to complete at CSB/SJU: a future studies project. Our task for our senior seminar was to identify a current issue/challenge/problem in the world and then write a paper from the year 2041 outlining how we spent the past 30 years addressing the challenge and ultimately created a more peaceful and just world.

After participating in brainstorm sessions, guided meditations, and reading about the invention of future studies projects, I came to the conclusion that I was going to create peace in the future through the implementation of backyard mini farms. Each household across the U.S. would attain 60% of their food from their own backyard or a community garden located in a 2 mile radius of their house. I will spare you the 20 page paper details of how this was accomplished (for the time being), but the entire process led to many sleepless nights and even more arguments with my roommates about whether or not it was a good idea for each household to have 4 hens in a small coop in their backyard.

On the day that our seminar presented our projects to one another, I discovered that my project idea was almost identical to two of my peers, Casey Wojtalewicz and Chris Morgan. After we all finished presenting, I remember talking with the two of them and agreeing how powerful of a team we could be in the future when our projects and ideas cross paths. 

Fast forward to January 2012: I was teaching high school geometry in Stuttgart, Arkansas, Chris Morgan was volunteering with the Vincentian Volunteer Corps in Denver, and Casey Wojtalewicz was working as an intern for the Sierra Club in LA. On January 5^th the three of us were reunited at the Grand Aspirations / Summer of Solutions winter training session for program leaders who are going to lead Summer of Solutions programs in various cities around the country this summer. Throughout the training, Chris, Casey and I developed our plans to work with a group of young Solutionaries (teams of individuals who focus on creating holistic solutions to local economic, environmental and social challenges) this summer to raise awareness about and create positive change in our communities concerning environmental justice. All three of our projects will address small scale agriculture and energy usage in our communities. We suddenly came to the realization that we were taking the first step towards accomplishing our Peace Studies project goals that we had written about only seven months before.

At the training it became clear to me that idealism is really only something that exists in the minds of the unimaginative. Sure, when we wrote our project ideas, the future seemed somewhat idealistic. However, when you commit yourself to a future goal and have peers to support you in this goal, the sky is truly the limit. I look forward to writing future blog posts about the progress of our Summer of Solutions project in Stuttgart and to hear more about the other projects around the country!

Peace and Love to the Dreamers.