It’s been several months since the demise of the community garden located at N. 6th and Curtin Streets, and constructed by Green Urban Initiative (GUI) last spring. Since then, we’ve taken a step back to evaluate what went wrong, ramp up fundraising efforts and, most importantly, revisit the mission behind our community garden program. We’ve emerged from this time of reflection more focused and committed than ever to assist community members with the development of garden space within their neighborhoods.
GUI’s goal, through its community vegetable garden program, is to empower and provide assistance to urban residents interested in growing their own food. While the benefits to self-food production are many, those benefits are compounded even further when neighbors have the opportunity to grow their food alongside each other within their communities. Unfortunately, many barriers exist to the development and success of these community gardens.
In an effort to overcome these barriers, we’ve developed a garden partnership program in which communities and neighborhood organizations can request assistance with the development of gardens. The application for this program will be accessible through our website (www.greenurban.org) in the near future. Through the program, GUI will review the applications and offer support to projects based on available resources. GUI is able to provide assistance with materials, volunteers, education, plot management and land use agreements in exchange for a few committed members of the community.
We’ve been working hard over these last few months to rebound from a difficult situation, and we sincerely appreciate all of the overwhelming support that we’ve received both financially and through words of encouragement. However, we still need your help to continue to assist urban gardens in Harrisburg.
We have big plans for 2013, including a goal to develop two additional community gardens, but, in order to meet this goal, we need to keep the support rolling. We have several fundraising opportunities planned for the coming months, including a half-price happy hour event at Suba through the month of March and yet another benefit at The Abbey Bar soon to be announced. If you’d like to make a direct contribution, please visit our website for more details. In addition, if you’re interested in bringing garden space to your community and would like some assistance, please check out the partnership application on our website or email us at gui@greenurban.org for more information.
Stay tuned for additional opportunities to get involved this spring, and thank you for your continued support!
Jason Zubler is president of Green Urban Initiative. More information about the organization can be found at www.greenurban.org.
