Hello! from Hartford, CT

Posted on January 3, 2013 by saranania

Hi Everyone, I’m Sarana, Ra for short. This year will be my first year as a member of the Summer of Solutions team in Hartford CT. I learned about the program through another food justice organization I work for in the city called Cooking Matters. As I have just returned from Wisconsin, to my home city of Hartford, CT, I have been so inspired by the many initiatives within the city to make food scarcity, and access to healthy affordable foods a priority in our communities. My work revolves around sustainability and social justice, primarily with youth. I combine these passions by being part of initiatives that serve to empower underserved demographics of people. This has taken many faces from, teaching art with youth, to running a permaculture garden at a local community center, to teaching sexual health to young women and working as a doula for a non-profit organization. I love the many ways there are to be involved in supporting, enlivening, and contributing to the overall health of our communities. It is in fact, our natural state of being.

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The Badger Bioneer Spirit

Posted on January 3, 2013 by growingfoodandsustainability

The past month was full of holiday spirit and generosity, but the highlight for Growing Food and Sustainability was receiving a Metcalfe’s School Garden Leader Award at the Badger Bioneers Conference! The award included a gift of $1,000 for the organization and also allowed program leaders Gabrielle and Natalie to attend the two-day conference free of charge.

Natalie and Gabrielle with their check! The other winners of the award were Mary Michaud of Van Hise Elementary in Madison and Cheryl Stout of Oregon Middle School.

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Lexington Gearing Up for Year 2

Posted on January 2, 2013 by hinahara

Full Circles Foundation Lexington has begun talks and preparations for 2013’s summer program. As we enter our second year, we are so excited and thankful for the success of our inaugural year. In less than a year’s time we were able to build a program for Lexington middle school girls encompassing curriculum for a strong self, a healthy earth and a fair economy. What did we do? Everything from self-defense classes for a strong and prepared self, a photography project to build local pride in our community, to trash to treasure micro-ventures to support camp finances, and even swimming in a creek at a local nature reserve. Our summer was filled with community building and memory making for instructors and campers.

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Breaking ground and planting seeds for a great New Year

Posted on December 31, 2012 by farmingbards

Hello! We are Farming Bards, a new organization dedicated to bringing the people of our community closer to the Earth and to each other. We feel that strengthening our connection to our natural world and building friendships with our neighbors is absolutely vital. Technology and fast paced lifestyles can make us very lonely and disconnected from each other, which can lead to so many problems. We also are eating much less naturally grown foods, and not taking advantage of what many of us have right behind our homes—land on which we can grow our own delicious fruits and vegetables. Why can’t we all get together as friends and grow food together? We can! And we are starting this year in our own city, Hapeville, Georgia!

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Hot Dogs and the Collapse of Monoeconomies

Posted on December 20, 2012 by jennydawntotten

One of Build it Up West Virginia’s program coordinators says it best when he describes community development in West Virginia: “I eat more hot dogs than any other vegetarian I know.” Some of the things that make organizing in central Appalachia so special are also what makes it so frustrating. The above quote from Joe references the fact that much of what you do here is centered around food. Church dinners, little old ladies inviting you in for cookies and tea, going to do a presentation in a school and being “treated” to school lunch- it’s all building community through FOOD. And if you are a vegetarian, then just prepare yourself emotionally to get used to the taste of a slaw and chili hot dog- to not eat this delicacy is considered blasphemy and will get you tossed out of a community meeting faster than anything else.

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Building Community in Arleta

Posted on December 20, 2012 by hinahara

I hope that you’re enjoying this time of the year with loved ones. I really appreciate the holidays because it gives me a chance to spend quality time with those who I am close to. This year has been very busy for me as I am going to school and starting a community program in Arleta with the guidance of Grand Aspirations. I’ve gotten to know some of the people behind this organization over the past five months due to my participation in a program partially supported by GA located in East Los Angeles called La Causa Summer of Solutions. I’m happy to be under the wing of an organization that is run by young people who are enthusiastically and successfully creating programs that integrate community building, social justice, and sustainability.

Jaqueline Bartz, Program Leader

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Solutionaries at Work in Ithaca

Posted on December 15, 2012 by ArianaShapiro

We’ve been playing around with this idea for more than a year, but we are finally on the ground organizing a Summer of Solutions Ithaca! We are thrilled to engage with the community in a new way and it could not come at a more perfect time — Ithaca is undergoing a transformation and our vision of a sustainable future for the area seems closer than ever.

A little background first: Ithaca is a progressive city situated in rural upstate New York and home to two fantastic universities, Cornell and Ithaca College. We have a history of enacting the world we would like to live in. For instance, Ithacans successfully kept Wal-Mart at bay from 1992 until 2005, concentrating on small business development aided by our own currency, “Ithaca Hours”, which are to be used as payment for hours of work. Ithaca and Tompkins County are replete with organic farms, which are often youth led. We’ve seen widespread energy efficiency campaigns and the development of numerous local renewable energy sources. Last year, we elected a 24-year-old Cornell graduate as mayor of the city. Ithaca is home to countless celebrations commemorating this special, beautiful place we call home.

We recognize that Ithaca still has problems. We haven’t transitioned substantially to renewable energy sources. We do not yet have a viable local food system. Race, class and gender injustice persist. Many residents are painfully aware of the natural gas industry’s intention to drill in the Marcellus Shale that lies under Ithaca and surrounding counties in New York.

The Green Umbrella – NY Youth for a Just and Sustainable Future members protesting fracking at Powershift New York, April 2012

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All Solutionary Systems Go!

Posted on December 6, 2012 by Eli Shepherd

Summer is back already!..wait, it’s not? Well, with sixty degree weather in November and December it sure feels like it. The physical season of summer may not be here but the problem-solving and action-oriented spirit of summer which earns us the name “solutionary” is most certainly in full swing.

Iowa City solutionaries hard at work at Wildwoods Farm in Solon, Iowa.

Since a group of us Iowa Citians got back from the 2012 Grand Aspirations August Gathering, we have been quite a busy bunch. For starters, we have applied for two grants for our energy efficiency campaign Our Power. The funding organizations were the United States Climate Action Network (USCAN) and RE-AMP, a network of Midwest nonprofits and foundations working to reduce global warming pollution. We successfully secured the RE-AMP grant. In fact we were awarded $5,000 over our expected amount, allocated for the purpose of hiring consultant to help us identify viable ways of engaging landlords in our campaign for city-wide energy efficiency. We could not have achieved this without the hard work and dedication of our program leaders Nick Gerken and Zach Gruenhagen. Most exciting, and frightening, of all, was that in the message accompanying our RE-AMP grant, we were referred to by the grant selection committee as the only youth doing solutionary work in the state of Iowa. Needless to say we’re determined to live up to our status. Continue reading →

SoS Middleton: Making Art and Winning Awards

Posted on December 6, 2012 by growingfoodandsustainability

Thank you to everyone who made Growing Food and Sustainability’s first year a success! Please take a look below to see all that Summer of Solutions-Middleton accomplished.

Program Mission:
We started GFS to engage youth in hands-on environmental education through food production, cooking, art, biking, and multi-age relationship building. We ran a summer garden camp, organized community workdays, piloted a bike-powered compost service, and delivered produce donations to those in need.

Accomplishments:

27 students ages 4-17 involved in the summer garden camp
108 hours of garden summer camp taught within 9 weeks
1,260 pounds of produce grown and harvested
1,220 pounds diverted from the waste stream through our bike-powered compost pick-up service
730 pounds of produce donated to the Middleton Outreach Ministry Food Pantry
229 pounds of produce donated to the Middleton Senior Center

Since our Garden Summer Camp finished-up in August, we have been working with the Ecology Clubs at Middleton High School and the Clark Street Community School to keep students involved in garden and sustainability education. These groups helped us prepare the garden and youth farm for the winter, learned how to construct a light table to grow plants indoors year-round, and participated in conversation about our food system.

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