Journal 14

Loretta Alexander
May 1, 2008
Hum 3500
Freeda Burnstad

Journal 14

It is hard when the communication is not open, or not finding the time to really make a connection. It doesn't get very much credibility to the organization. I know that the organization has to deal with a lot of politics, but they need to find time for the community. So my advice for my placement organization is before you go out and try to recruit people make sure you have the time and effort to really spend with them. I do believe that the community gardens are a good thing. I will continue to educate my children and their parents on how valuable a community garden could be. Hopefully my placement organization will follow through and we will be able to get our community garden going next year.

Journal 13

Loretta Alexander
April 22, 2008
HUM 3500
Freeda Burnstad

Journal 13

How did the Earth Day event go for your organization? Actually, our organization won’t be able to participate due to time conflicts. It was sad that I could not meet my service learning partner at Earth Day. I was looking forward to seeing what his organization offered to the public.

Journal 12

Loretta Alexander
April 17, 2008
HUM 3500
Freeda Burnstad

Journal 12

What role do non-governmental organizations have in advocating for social and environmental justice? NGO’s have the ability to harness community energy, work outside of the strict confines of government bureaucracy, and the mandates of the profit sector. Therefore, they play a critical role in a democracy – in particular, their ability to address human and natural needs, justice, sustainability these are issues that profit motivation and bureaucratic intransigence often have a difficult time addressing in effective and responsive ways.

Journal 11

Loretta Alexander
April 17, 2008
HUM 3500
Freeda Burnstad

Journal 11

What is your organization history of activities? The Community Gardens Project is a new project of NCO that I initiated this past summer and officially got started on this past September. However, as a prelude to beginning, I went around to numerous community organizations, non-profits and did a community assessment on needs and desires. All meeting pointed to the local food, access, poverty issues. NCO offered to let me house the project as a program of theirs. The only caveat was that I had to find all of my own funding. So, since then, I have been working on developing different model gardens, finding sustainable funding, and program development, getting all the players, partners, to collaborate, guidelines, working relationships, liability. Finally, we are moving into implementation with the MCOE garden, Head Start Gardens, Talmage Garden, and by this fall, we should be moving forward on several garden implementations. Have they been effective in creating change? Again, this is a new project I just got it started last September. How can you continue to advocate for changes after this course is over with? I can advocate for more gardens in the community, by showing the sustainability of the gardens that are already in progress.

Journal 10

Loretta Alexander
March 31, 2008
HUM 3500
Freeda Burnstad

Journal 10

Yes, we are advocating for policy changes. One of the key issues to making access to healthy, nutritious local foods a sustainable endeavor, is to get local institutions to change their purchasing policies and demand more local fresh foods. However, as businesses and public institutions, they will not change unless there is significant demand for change. Even though there already exist a number of people clamoring for change, it will take much larger numbers of people to demanding the change. These larger numbers are not going to demand local, healthy produce unless they have direct experience growing and eating it, earning more money by producing their own food, and questioning why. Policy change is important, for me, the most important and effective agent of change comes from a ground swelling of demand from below.

Journal 8

Loretta Alexander
March 21, 2008
HUM 3500
Freeda Burnstad

Journal 8

How does your organization address economic and political issues? The economic issues are the inability of many people to afford fresh produce, or the lack of resources to get access to land. We try to overcome both of those by providing access and training. The skills that you learn in producing food are transferable to many professions and provide good job training skills.
On the political level, a large part of organizing a community/school garden is involving the families and community members in the process of development and management of the garden. With this sense of ownership and working together with your community, people become more involved in the community life of their neighborhood, school, and local government. As a result, they are more often involved in the political decisions that affect their communities.

Journal 7

Loretta Alexander
March 16, 2008
HUM 3500
Freeda Burnstad

Journal 7

I was thinking about the SL question did this exercise with Doug give me any insights or tools that I could use with Mendocino Community Gardens Project. The exercise that we did with Doug got me thinking how inspiring and refreshing it was. It reminded me of some of the things that my grandfather and I used to do. This tool I can use when I'm working with my children on the project talking to them about how nature is part of us. We should not abuse nature, we should cherish it. Talking about how it doesn't take that much to grow your own vegetables. You don't have to have a lot of land. If people can grow flowers in a bed, or pots why can't they grow vegetables? Even if they live in apartments they can replace flowers would vegetables. The other thing that I liked about Doug's exercise was also listening to the other person, and watching their expressions. Really trying to put your feet in their shoes, and acknowledge that their feelings are real.

Journal 6

Loretta Alexander
March 9, 2008
HUM 3500
Freeda Burnsta

Journal 6

Does Mendocino Community Gardens Project work with communities of faith? No, not yet, but that is something we are considering, and our purpose is to establish gardens anywhere we can.

In your opinion is there room for development in these areas? Yes, there is room for development in this area, and we are looking at it in the future. Communities with faith would be a good source, and a place to start because they provide other services to the community. This would be another way to get community gardens in neighborhoods, and help shape our future by giving the community a sense of power and ownership.

Journal 5

Loretta Alexander
February 26, 2008
HUM 3500
Freeda Burnstad

Journal 5

The long term goal of the Community Gardens Project is to establish a regional network of sustainable, community-based gardens that provide access to land, garden and nutrition education, and a nutritious food supply for as many of our community as possible.
How can this shape our future? The Community Gardens Project is trying to establish model gardens that can be replicated through the support network in a variety of different ways. For example; community school, and pre-school gardens with children and their families have their own plots at the schools. Community gardens in neighborhoods at low income housing units, senior and cross-generational gardens, and plowshares gardens.
The hope of The Community Gardens Project is that this will help shape our future by providing the current and future generations with access, knowledge, control, and a sense of community power over the most important aspects of their lives – their food and environment.

Journal 4

Loretta Alexander
February 18, 2008
HUM 3500
Freeda Brunstad

Journal 4

Whose fault is it, our environmental issues, especially in regards to community gardens? In the U.S. and industrial/urban countries, we have moved into a very commodity oriented economy and culture where everything is dependent on earning money and therefore spend money. Miles says if you combine this with the inequalities of income and wealth in our country, you have a large portion of the population at the bottom that has very little land with little or no useable outdoor space. Combined this with a poor education system for those with the least, and poverty level wages that make it very difficult to find the time or place to think about growing your own food, or having the ability to grow it.
The Community Gardens Project does address these issues, by really creating a subsidized food production system that can’t survive in the Markey economy by itself – there are not sufficient profits in producing food for yourself. However, a piece of the project is to begin developing business opportunities for the gardeners that want to continue and expand. The Community Gardens Project main goal is to create access to the land, education, and materials that would normally not have that access due to the nature of our economic system – by seeking grants, government subsidized education, community contributions, and volunteers.