Access to Healthy Food and Promoting Healthy Lives

This chapter talks about community gardens that serve as sites for both food production and community education. The Bronx Green-up (BGU) is an initiative of the New York Botanical Garden. The BGU provides the technical support and materials needed for community gardens to succeed. The Green Corps, run by the Cleveland Botanical Garden, introduces at-risk youth to organic farming methods and provides them with opportunities to learn about gardening, nutrition, and environmental issues. The Growing to Green program, from the Franklin Park Conservatory and Botanical Gardens, has helped start, strengthen, and sustain approximately three hundred community or school gardens in Ohio. The Sankofa Farm at Batram's Garden involves the youth to enable them to get to college. Reflecting on the case studies in the chapter, it is clear that moving a community from a failing to a healthy state requires the participation of multiple entities: municipal agencies, social service organizations, community activists, for-profit organizations, and cultural and religious institutions. Each can play a role in making fresh produce more available and more appealing to those living in food deserts. By involving low-income residents in growing their own food, such initiatives will also enable them to feel in control of their diet and not at the mercy of what is available at the corner store. As gardens spring up in previously underserved neighborhoods, communities experience the ripple effects of reduced vandalism, trash, petty crime, and loitering.