Community Garden Scholar

Food Solutions New England  has published a story on the service learning project I am now wrapping up: Monadnock Farm & Community Coalition Introduces New Local Food Resource, "Cultivating Community" The Monadnock Farm & Community Coalition (MFCC) has announced the launch of a new resource for Coalition partners and community members: a visual and narrative portfolio depicting the array of work people in the Monadnock Region are doing around issues of local food and the ways these individuals experience, relate with, and find meaning in the work. The photographic and written depictions, available to the public through MFCC’s  website , can be used by organizations and stakeholders to enhance their own efforts, whether to inform promotional or educational programs, engage new members, apply for funding, or support collaboration. The collection can also provide a tool for farmers, service providers, educators, and others to reflect upon and communicate the val...

Cultivating Community:  Portraying work in local food system issues as experienced by people in the Monadnock Region Jess Gerrior, MS - Antioch University New England Project Description: This project involves people in the Monadnock Region who are engaged in work around local food system issues. Whether farming, gardening, educating, purchasing, or advocating for a more just, vibrant, and sustainable food system, there are many ways people experience this work. "Cultivating Community" is a doctoral service learning project focused on what their work entails, what it takes to do it, why they are involved, and what it means. "Cultivating Community" events are informal gatherings fo r people engaged or interested in work around local food system issues. Participants are invited to share and discuss their perspectives. My role in the project is to facilitate the creation of a realistic portrayal of participants' work, which will be a new, share...

The American Community Gardening Association 2017 Conference: CONNecting our Roots  has been deliciously invigorating. The conference theme seems especially poignant this year, as I continually "dig" deeper into community gardening as both an extension of my professional journey in sustainability education and the means for "growth" as a community-based and critically-oriented researcher. (I am not the only attendee who finds every opportunity to use garden metaphors; they are everywhere!) I still believe strongly in the power of higher education and local efforts to generate synergistic solutions for health and justice in our food systems, and thereby shift our larger social, economic, and ecological spheres toward greater sustainability. I am finding more and more that a balance between theory and practice - academic and "dirt under the nails" approaches - is the path to real progress. Being able to engage with other dedicated, intelligent, and courage...

In doing some background research for a literature review and photovoice research project I am conducting this fall, I came across the 2015 report, " Improving Access to Food Systems Among Communities of Color: A Food Justice Issue Report to the Oregon Food Bank "  - written by Alma M.O. Trinidad, Helen Camden, and Anne Coleman of Portland State University's Center to Advance Racial Equity Research , in cooperation with the Oregon Food Bank . I am interested in this report for many reasons, and it's an excellent example of the kind of work I want to continue doing in my doctoral program and beyond. A few aspects I'll mention here are the authors' engagement and empowerment of community members in the process of research and advocacy, and the sensitivity with which they considered different cultural compositions of Portland neighborhoods. They did a great job of identifying the aims and methods of their research, and presenting their findings in a way that re...