I'm the director of a small nonprofit community agriculture program. Since 2011 we've started 8 gardens and 3 orchards with 240 low-income families. We've been able to find funding (local grants, inspired individuals) to help launch each new site. However, now that there are so many gardens and burgeoning interest in starting more across the county, we're having a hard time finding funding build organizational capacity. We operate on a barebones staff and really can't continue to grow without more help at this level, even though there is a lot more families in other neighborhoods who would like to participate.
One of our supportive elected officials has suggested we create a county-wide community garden program with more reliable, steady funding and staff. Sounds GREAT to me! He is pulling together a local who's-who think tank to explore how to to this. My charge is to find out about similar existing programs and how they are funded. I've attended the last 4 ACGA conferences and, among, the many other things I learn there, always come away with a "how do all these other communities/cities/counties have Community Garden programs while in our county we have one because I, one person, started it and continue to do the lioness's share of the work/thinking/grant writing/collaboration building/materials delivery/outreach...?" I would very much like to hear from those of you working in Official Community Garden Programs: - who is the governing entity (city, county, food bank, nonprofit, etc) - how did it come about - how is it funded - how many people/families served by the program - how many people on staff We live in a smallish county, for California, with 270,000 pop, so suggestions from places around that size are especially welcome. Thank you, Ana *Ana Rasmussen, MSWDirector * *Mesa Verde Gardens * *831.325.3560* *[email protected] <[email protected]> * *I can think of no better form of personal involvement in the cure of the environment than that of gardening. Wendell Berry* -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: <http://list.communitygarden.org/pipermail/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org/attachments/20150205/d0ba5f74/attachment.html> _______________________________________________ The American Community Gardening Association listserve is only one of ACGA's services to community gardeners. To learn more about the ACGA and to find out how to join, please go to http://www.communitygarden.org To post an e-mail to the list: [email protected] To subscribe, unsubscribe or change your subscription: http://list.communitygarden.org/mailman/listinfo/community_garden_list.communitygarden.org
