ECO in the News:
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ECO City Farms featured in Kaiser Permanente Benefit’s Annual Report.
Check it out at: http://info.kp.org/communitybenefit/assets/pdf/our_communities/mid-atlantic/KPMAS_CommBen_report_2010.pdf — see pages 8,9 and 11
For the new year, a new name: ECO City Farms!
As of January 1, 2011, Engaged Community Offshoots, Inc (ECO) will be doing business as ECO City Farms– same website, same contact information.
You can also reach us at ecocityfarms.org and info@ecocityfarms.org.
No matter how you reach us, remember us as the premier urban farm in the Chesapeake region!
ECO City Farms– visit us today! Farm address: 4913 Crittenden Street, Edmonston, MD 20781; Office address: 6010 Taylor Road, Riverdale, MD 20737. Info@ecocityfarms.org; 301-288-1125.
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University of Maryland- Newsline
Edmonston Urban Farm Gives Immigrants
Training, a Chance for a Decent Wage
By Tami Le
Maryland Newsline:
http://www.newsline.umd.edu/politics/specialreports/immigration/urban-farming-111910.htm
Friday, Nov. 19, 2010
EDMONSTON, Md. – On most days, Roy Caspari, a native of Indonesia, works as a massage therapist and landlord in College Park. But every Saturday, Caspari drives to Edmonston to learn about urban farming with new friends from Guatemala, Peru, Ethiopia and Honduras.
“Everybody [is] from different places, from different countries,” Caspari said. “But because we are here for one thing … we just click.”
Caspari is one of eight trainees participating in a fledging program designed to train immigrants and others living in urban areas to farm, so that they can provide fresh, local food to under-served communities and earn a living wage.
The program, a partnership between the Crossroads Farmer’s Market in Takoma Park and the Edmonston Urban Farm, provides 10 months of training, in everything from composting to growing sprouts to farm management. At the end of the program, the majority will receive a $2,700 stipend to start their own farms.
“I’m trying to create and help find a way to have farming be profitable, not marginal,” said Margaret Morgan-Hubbard, CEO of the nonprofit Engage Community Offshoots, which operates the Edmonston farm. “That’s part of our experiment here, is to figure out how people can have a decent living wage at farming.”
The program launched this summer with a $30,000 grant from Project for Public Spaces, a nonprofit planning, design and educational organization. Trainees were recruited through outreach events at Casa de Maryland and from neighborhoods in Edmonston and Takoma Park.
Michelle Dudley, co-director of Crossroads, said she had met individuals coming to the market who had agricultural experience in their home countries but didn’t know how to get started in farming in Maryland.
“That’s not something you can explain to someone in one conversation, especially the land issue, and loans and the growing season,” she said.
The grant was initially given in 2007 to start a micro-loan program for immigrant and refugee farmers, but Dudley felt important pieces were missing: training and access to land. “Even if these people had a couple thousand dollars from the micro-loan program to start up a farm, it would not have been feasible” to do so without training, she said.
So instead of distributing the funds at the time, Dudley proposed in January a partnership with ECO to use the funds for an urban farmer’s training program. Her proposal was accepted, and recruitment began in April.
For ECO, this was a way to create better options for the immigrant-heavy neighborhoods surrounding the Edmonston farm. If you want to get healthy food into an El Salvadoran community, “train and get El Salvadorans to grow healthy food,” said Vinnie Bevinino, ECO director of urban agriculture operations.
Many of the program’s participants, including Caspari, have already brought their family and neighbors out to the farm to show them what they are doing. Some of the techniques Caspari has learned were used by his grandparents in Indonesia, he said. But they didn’t know it was organic farming.
Roy Caspari takes a break during his Saturday training at the Edmonston Urban Farm. Caspari is one of the eight participants in the urban farmer training program that started in August.
(Photo by Maryland Newsline’s Tami Le)
“Now I teach this to my kids,” he said.
Participants in the program, who also learned marketing strategies, took turns selling at the Crossroads Farmer’s Market every Wednesday up until last month, when the market closed for the winter.
Jose Castillo, a program participant, said he sold all 20 gallons of honey he brought on his first four trips to the Crossroads Farmer’s Market. Castillo, who is originally from Guatemala, keeps bees in his backyard.
“I find out that honey is a type of sentimental food,” he said. “Because when people try my honey… they say, ‘Wow, this is the honey like from my home country…the honey like my grandfather.’ ”
And when they taste it, they buy it right away, he said. “People from Latin America, from China, from the states, from Slovakia, all Europe … My honey is good stuff … very ripe, raw, local.”
“You learn every day,” says Jose Castillo, as he installs a water pipe at the Edmonston Urban Farm. Castillo is a beekeeper but says he has also been involved in everything from building compost bins to watering plants. (Photo by Maryland Newsline’s Tami Le)
PRESS RELEASE
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NATIONAL ENDOWMENT FOR THE ARTS ANNOUNCES GRANT TO ENGAGED COMMUNITY OFFSHOOTS
$10,000 grant will support a Healthy Food/Healthy Living Mural
on Kenilworth Avenue
November 23, 2010—[Prince George’s County]—Rocco Landesman, Chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts, today announced that Engaged Community Offshoots (ECO) has been approved for a grant of $10,000 to support the creation of a mural on Kenilworth Avenue that will convey images of a vital and healthy community, incorporating themes of urban agriculture, alternative transportation, and fair and just employment. Engaged Community Offshoots, creators of the nearby Edmonston Urban Farm, is one of 1,057 not-for-profit organizations recommended for a grant as part of the federal agency’s first round of fiscal year 2011 grants. In total, the Arts Endowment will distribute $26.68 million to support projects nationwide.
An independent agency of the federal government, the National Endowment for the Arts advances artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. NEA Chairman Rocco Landesman said, “I continue to be impressed with the creative, innovative, and excellent projects brought forward by arts organizations across the country. Our grantees are not only furthering their art forms but also enhancing their neighborhoods by making them more vibrant, livable, and fun.”
“Engaged Community Offshoots is very excited about this opportunity to work with the local residents to demonstrate the power of art to beautify, uplift and unify our community,” says CEO Margaret Morgan-Hubbard. “Our mural will depict how this urban community can be revitalized by simultaneously producing art, employment and its own culturally appropriate food.”
ECO’s mission is to create community-based enterprises that cultivate a just and green economy, countering malnutrition, hunger, waste and environmental destruction, and working in synergy with one another to bring about sustainable community wellness. ECO’s Edmonston Urban Farm, on nearby Crittenden Street, sells produce to the area’s small independent restaurants, bodegas, food coops– especially those that cater to low-income residents– and at the Riverdale and Crossroads Farmers Markets. Engaged Community Offshoots is a member of the Port Towns Community Health Partnership and one of the founding organizations of the Central Kenilworth Area Revitalization (CKAR) CDC. It is also the organizer of the annual regional urban agriculture conference, “Sowing Seeds Here and Now! A Chesapeake Urban Farming Summit.”
The National Endowment for the Arts was established by Congress in 1965 as an independent agency of the federal government that has awarded more than $4 billion on projects of artistic excellence, creativity, and innovation for the benefit of individuals and communities. The NEA extends its work through partnerships with state arts agencies, local leaders, other federal agencies, and the philanthropic sector. To join the discussion on how art works, visit the National Endowment for the Arts at arts.gov. ###-
Kudos For Jobs Done Well
On October 26, 2010, Margaret Morgan-Hubbard, founder and CEO of Engaged Community Offshoots, was awarded the Distinguished Leadership Award for a Citizen Planner by the National Capital Area Chapter of the American Planning Association. The award recognizes an individual that has advanced or promoted planning in the region.
Morgan-Hubbard is also a member of the Executive Committee and the Leader of the Sustain Goal Team for Envision Prince George’s. Envision Prince George’s received an Award for Distinction in Community Engagement and Outreach. The award recognizes an individual, organization, plan, or program that showcases innovation or extraordinary effort in encouraging inclusive public participation in planning efforts. Morgan-Hubbard also served as an outreach ambassador for Envision Prince George’s and helped develop its Civic Engagement Action Plan.
We are in the process of planning our next Sowing Seeds summit for 2011 – we will keep you posted!
Thanks to everyone for participating in the 2010 Sowing Seeds Here and Now! A Chesapeake Urban Farming Summit. It was a wonderful success, with about 375 attendees and 40 presenters engaged and passionate about proliferating urban agriculture in our region. We have posted some of the presentation materials – take a look!
We are planning a fall harvest festival, more information on that as it unfolds.
We invite you to come to our open volunteer hours, when we’d be happy show you our urban farm.
