Halloween with GTECH Strategies

"Growth Through Education + Community Health " is GTECH Strategies, a non-profit organization in Pittsburgh Dedicated to environmental and social justice through vacant lot reclamation and a green economy for everyone. Through community empowerment, green economy policy advocacy and "green" growth, the group makes it claim to fame by growing sunflowers in what would otherwise be abandoned urban lots. Learn more about this stellar group: www.gtechstrategies.org

This past Halloween weekend I was invited by Mo Copeland, GTECH's Community Programs Manager to join the group and other community activists to harvest this seasons sunflower batch. The beginning of the day started at the East Liberty project behind Peabody High school with volunteers of all ages from Pittsburgh Cares and Grow Pittsburgh. Then, later in the afternoon at the Uptown project with the Clean and Green Uptown youth empowerment and advocacy group. It was a beautiful reminder to see the dedication this community has and the diversity in groups that GTECH is able to bring together through it mission.

The sunflowers, aside from bringing a cheerful and beautiful landscape to Pittsburgh urban, do a lot for soil beneath that has seen the harmful effects of human use and industrial building one too many times. The flowers are known for removing toxins from soil and providing replenishment. The flowers also, at harvest, can be used for biofuel increasing green innovative technology and resilience in the community.

GTECH reclaims vacant land to be used for economic green growth and community development. Many of the lots GTECH has revitalized are today being used as community garden and gathering spaces. The organization partners itself with many other non-profit groups and community development groups in the area to help strengthen community, local economy and the environment. The group has seen nation wide recognition and collaboration and has even been invited to the white house to be recognized as a "national model for green innovation and community transformation". GTECH is an excellent model for this community and offers unique ways of collaborations between many walks of activism associated with the environment, the community, the economy and sustainable systems.

Three Rivers Bioneers Conference

This weekend was the Three River Bioneers Conference, a weekend dedicated to environmental health, community health and spiritual health. Bioneers is a non-profit organization based out of Marin County CA, with community chapters across the nation. Their mission at Bioneers is "...inspiring a shift to live on Earth in ways that honor the web of life, each other and future generations." They promote education and leadership in the realm of environmentalism, social justice, community empowerment and individual well being.

The main conference took place in San Rafael, but individual communities were invited to telecast the conference via satellite in their hometown and conduct workshops and keynote speakers at the local level. PASA had their very own, Greg Boulos (regional director) highlighted on Sunday at the Three Rivers conference put together by the Urban Ecology Project as he addressed conference goers about the importance of local economies and sustainable agriculture. Greg also assisted local permaculture enthusiast Jeff Newman with two workshops one on Transition Towns and the other on Urban Permaculture Design, both a huge successes at the conference.

The Transition movement essentially is "a twelve step program fro communities to get off oil" as Newman put it so gracefully. This workshop brought about a lively discussion about fears and worries about the state of the planet and humans dependency on oil, a source of energy that will not sustain us for much longer and continuosly cuases harmful effects to the environment and soical unrest amongst nations. Learn more about Transition Towns.

Permaculture design, is a model, philosophy, life system and practice I hold close to my heart. Essentially Permaculture is defined as a design system that incorporates human settings with agricultural ecology in efforts to build a system in which the environment and humans can live in harmonious relationship, sustaining each other. Learn more about Permaculture, Urban Permaculture and how you can become a Permaculture Activist.

The plenary speakers I watched on Sunday, Joanna Macy, Mari Margil and Almir Narayamoga Surui left me feeling really motivated and inspired about the work I'm doing and the work others are doing to make our food system socially just and environmentally sustainable. These speakers helped me understand individual activist roles in this transitioning planet and how important each cause we pursue is crucial to a larger shift. That collectively we could be working with different goals and agendas but using similar tactics and strategies to complete them.

Mari Margil, co-director to the environmental legal defense food spoke directly about triumphs in Western Pennsylvania to outlaw mountain top removal and coal mining in the local community, Blaine. She spoke about how rights of the environment are missing from constitutional law. Currently our environment is only protected in law under the condition that is owned by someone else, our environment has become the modern day slave. But individual communities are standing up and defending their local environments by writing into city charters that the environment has priority over the corporation. In Ecuador, they have even adopted individual rights of the environment and its well being into their nations constitution, making them the first in the world to do so.

Repeatedly the topic of mountain top removal and false claims to "clean coal"- a topic sensitive to most Pennsylvania and Appalachian natives- were mentioned during the workshops and outside discussions at the conference. Listening to personal understanding of the problem with coal mining and concern for the regions environment helped me realize how this problem may be "regionally specific" but people across the globe could identify with that feeling of helplessness when trying to defend the land they live on. Being a California native, we don't typically have mountain top removal at the heart of their passion for protecting the environment back home, but we have the same tone of passion when we discuss the rivers, ocean, salmon and pesticide drift. We, on the surface may have separate causes, but we have similar visions for solutions and can share our stories and efforts in support of that vision.

Pittsburgh School Lunch Reform

I recently attended a meeting with the Pittsburgh Public Schools to discuss local food in PGH school lunches. At the meeting was Michael Peck the director of food services for PPS, Cathy Willets purchasing supervisor for PPS, David Golomb president of Green Grocer whole sale produce, a food distributor for PPS, Josh Burnett education director for Grow Pittsburgh, and Jordan Kay director of marketing for Enrico Biscotti a local bakery, restaurant and catering service.

Right now PPS is working on this Peak Harvest program that started last year, inspired form the “harvest of the month” program in Oregon. “Peak Harvest” showcases one item of food each month that is grown locally. Here, the program is difficult to sustain through the winter because of the climate and we talked a lot about what items could be featured during the winter.

Other issues discussed about purchasing local food in school lunches were about quantity, finding local farmers that have the capacity to feed 13,000 kids. Accessibility, locating farmers and being able to transfer and obtain food in a way that is still local and consistency, having produce that is consistently the same size for two reasons 1) kids get upset when their apple is smaller then their peers and 2) the produce has to be an exact size to fit into the lunch trays.

In terms of preparing food at schools, Elementary and most middle schools in PGH do not have kitchens. Either they were not built with kitchens because fifty or so years ago when a majority of the schools were built during the steel industry boom kids went home to eat and when the steel industry collapsed in the 80’s schools were shut down and downsized.

Dismantling of school kitchens is also tied into the rise of large scale agriculture and food processing, it is cheaper for many schools to pay a food distributors to send them pre-made trays of food that can just be heated and served at the school rather then hiring kitchen staff to cook and serve it. Funding is another issue for improving the quality of school lunches. Because of the large amount of government funding that is cut from public education, schools often turn to large food distribution companies and corporations like PEPSI for financial support in exchange for selling corporate products in the cafeterias.

Whether or not the local region has the production capacity to can, freeze, clean and prepare its crops is yet another issue. California with so much large-scale agriculture has a lot of capacity for this, but smaller agricultural regions like PA don’t. Places like PA (and pretty much any state not on the west coast) become increasingly dependent on CA for food (specifically lettuce).

Local food can be costly, the PPS is working with a 1$ per student per meal budget that’s 20 cents per item in one meal. Vegetables have to be served raw because there is no place to cook them and it costs more to cook vegetables for 13,000 and to add another stop in the chain of distribution.

So what is being done? This past Labor Day PASA helped Slow Food and Grow Pittsburgh put together an event called A Time For Lunch it is a national day of awareness around school lunch reform

All across the country Slow Food is sponsoring many cities to put together their own potluck for the community to bring awareness around school lunches. There were about 360 communities across the nation holding an “Eat-In” that day.

One of the speakers at the event, Julie Pezzino from Grow Pittsburgh did a good job highlighting the challenges PGH public schools have in accessing and providing fresh food at school. One of the biggest issues she pointed out was that the schools here aren’t allowed to have knives in the kitchens because of a contract they are working under with the state. They also have outsourcing troubles because of this contract and can’t bring food directly into the school kitchen it first has to go through the PGH public school food distribution system.

Another progress being made is Grow Pittsburgh’s Edible School Yard Program. Based on a program developed in Berkeley CA by Alice Water called the seed-to-table learning model. The Pittsburgh Edible Schoolyard helps kids learn about growing food, eating healthy and investing in the community through hands on learning in the garden and applied learning in the classroom.

A day with Just Harvest an learning about EBT and farmer's market management

This week I visited with Just Harvest A center for action against hunger is a non-profit organization working towards justice through both economic and food access equality. They hope to beat challenges of hunger and poverty in the greater Pittsburgh area. They play a strong role in community activism and the mobilization of the anti-hunger movement in PGH through strong policy work, community service and outreach.

My first encounter with the organization was at a demonstration they were staging in front of the PPG building (a large corporation building and distributing glass) that was to bring awareness to how the large corporation is currently advocating to the state government for special interest tax breaks while the state struggles to devise a state budget and cuts are being proposed to human services (i.e schools and hospitals). Just harvest is one of a few local non-profits that works with the state to support programs that provide safe and livable environments for people.

Just harvest does this by providing welfare rights activism, individual consulting around welfare rights, free tax help and education, nutritional support and education and other access benefits. The organization also works very hard to help the welfare department provide food stamps to people living below the margin. 

Just Harvest is also playing a leading role in Pittsburgh food policy (as well as other policy initiatives). They helped put in order the first food policy charter for the city  in 1991, a charter that todays new, re-established Food Policy Council is working with to revamp and restore. The 1991 charter worked with PGH Port Authority to transport citizen in under served neighborhoods to grocery stores. 

They also formed the Farmer's Market Alliance in PGH, a program to help centralize farmer's markets in PGH in order to make them easier to manage and to provide a source where food stamps could be exchanged for fresh food. The food stamp aspect of Farmers Market Alliance was only a 3 yr pilot in which 5 food stamp (EBT) machines were purchased for individual farmers to run and manage. The program had difficulties succeeding because of the difficulties farmers had trying to manage their farm stand as well as the machine. It was also difficult for EBT shoppers to only have 1 out of 30 vendors to choose from when they went to the farmer's market. The program also lacked transparency between the bank, the state department, and the farmers (owners of the machines) making it difficult for technical assistance and program evaluation and improvement.

PASA eventually absorbed the Farmers Market Alliance with hopes to re-build it and make it stronger. But do to lack of time and staff needed in the western offices the program plan for a new Farmer's Market Management system in PGH has sat idle. Corinne Ogrodnik a local foodie, farmer and grad student at CMU that will be working with a few other students on a project that analyzes EBT access at the Farmer's Markets in PGH and how a more strategic program can be implemented to help make fresh local food more accessible to people living with low incomes. Helping conduct preliminary research on existing models of market management systems and food access policies along with conversations with farmer's and vendors in the PGH area will help provide a solid framework to give  the Farmer's Market Alliance a second chance.

The Lawrenceville Farm Stand!

This week I've been helping the Lawrenceville farm stand with community outreach and lending a hand at the Thursday farm stand. The farm stand is part of The Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank. With eleven stands allover the Pittsburgh area the Farm Stand Project helps connect low-income marginalized communities access fresh local produce. 

Each neighborhood that hosts a farm stand recieves their produce from various farmers, distributed through the  Greater Pittsburgh Food Bank. The stands are run by local community groups and neighbors. The Lawrenceville farm stand is located at the top of Main st. at the Steven Foster Center which hosts lots of events geared toward the seniors citizens of the Lawrenceville Community. Having just moved to Lawrenceville I was pleased to participate in something that would give me the oppurtunity to meet my neighbors.

I was also pleased to learn more about how the unique "Farm Stand" system works. They except Cash, EBT/Food Stamps, WIC and FMNP at all of their locations. At the Lawrenceville stand each customer takes a number apon arrival, when it is their turn they come up and choose their produce. Baskets are set out in allready bundled quantities to ensure equal distribution. They set aside a table of non-local produce since FMNP vouchers are not accepted with non-local produce. The Farm Stand atendee writes up a receipt that distinguishes cash from voucher and a person posted at the money box completes the transaction. I saw a relatively divers group of shoppers the stand however the elderly were by far the most frequent shopper in Lawrenceville particularly. I have helped distribute flyers to spread the word about the stand so hopefully the numbers will continue to grow.

Learning about the Farm Stand will hopefully help me learn more about Pennsylvania's EBT/WIC and FMNP distribution and acceptance methods. PASA is currently brainstorming ideas to make a market management program that will help vendors and shoppers have quick and affordable access to EBT at local farmer's markets. Leah and I are currently looking to meet with the Food Trust in Philadelphia to see where they are at in access to EBT and if there is anyway the organizations and Philadelphia and the organizations in Pittsburgh working towards food Jstice can form an alliance to build a stronger system in PA. Checkout the Food Trust's Farmer's Market Program at www.thefoodtrust.org or New York's Farmer's Market wireless EBT project at www.nyfarmersmarket.com to learn more.

Pittsburgh Food Policy Council

The food Policy council here in Pittsburgh is comprised of 20-30 members all coming from various backgrounds, there are members from The Pgh Food Bank, Just Harvest, The East End Food Co-Op, PASA, Pittsburgh Garden Experiment, PSU Extension Cooperative etc... The front runner of the council is Danae who runs Allegheny Greenworks and is also spearheading the Communities on Health Commission (COH) in the Urban Green Growth Collaborative (UGGC).

The Food Policy Council meets Bi-weekly and designs clear agenda goals before each meeting gathering. the goal of the council are to create local food policies that will help secure food access in Pittsburgh. The group is currently working on  writing charters on how this may happen, but motivation has been arising to start making the group more active in Pittsburgh politics. The group is also brainstorming ideas for a Healthy Corner Store Initiative, to help small bodega's in low income communities at risk of becoming "food deserts" have access to fresh wholesome food and whatever resources and store improvements they may need to make this possible.

I'm currently working on a collaboration of food policies that have passed in other cities and states to create a manual of references on how these policies can translate to Pittsburgh. In my search I continuously stumble upon The Food Trust in Philadelphia and would like to collaborate on possibly doing a case study of this organization, I feel they have already got the ball rolling in Philly around food security and being from the same state there are a lot of geographical strengths in collaborating with them. 

Like many Food Policy groups motivation, attendance and organization can be a challenge, along with group diversity. This groups is well aware of the pre-dominant social locations present in the room and is coming up with solutions, like rotating meeting space and times as well as outreach to communities and organizations in closer relation with the target food insecure communities.

Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank

On July 17 ~ I went out to the Greater Pittsburgh Community Food Bank and Met with a number of people to discuss my internship and how PASA may be able to collaborate with them. Joyce the CEO of the organization gave me a tour of the very productive facility along with a little history and the Food Banks involvement with food sovereignty both locally and nationally. Joyce also filled me in on workers benefits at the Food Bank, where they pick up and distribute their food and how the Food Bank has been involved with the union and teamsters.

After a couple of hours working in "re-pack" (the area where food that is donated re-packed into efficiently organized boxes for distribution) I had a telephone meeting with Cindy Moore about Community Garden plans being made for Addison Terrace Housing Authority community in the Hill District of Pittsburgh. There is a Food Bank managed farm stand there run completely by volunteers from the community that hope to build there own garden so that they may sell/have there own source of fresh vegetables. This project is very valuable and I hope to meet with other non-profit community gardening organizations in the area that might be able to support it (Landslide Community Farm and Grow Pittsburgh are two)

Afterwards I met with Kathryn Robinson the Glean Coordinator who discussed with me the importance of farm fresh gleaning projects for the food bank and ideas she has for Bike to Glean event as part of PASA's Local Food Month. I will also be organizing a Urban farm/garden awareness event for Local Food Month and hope to collaborate with Kathryn more. I also helped her connect with Mia and Leah who connect with a lot of local farmers at PASA so she can hopefully build her gleaning site list.

I then met with Vicki Lish who is the Food Bank's farm stand coordinator. She explained to me a little about the farm stand project which is a project designed to help bring fresh produce into distressed and/or marginalized communities. The stands are run by local community organizations or neighborhood volunteers. I hope to help Vicki with community outreach by visiting the farm stands an assessing ways they might be able to get more people from the community shopping at the stands. I also hope to connect the farm stands with PASA's long term Market Management project which will hopefully help make EBT machines and WIC easily accessible at more Farmer's Markets and Farm Stands. They are already accepted at all of the Food Bank farm stands but hopefully buy collaboration we can improve the situation in Pittsburgh as a whole. Giving EBT and WIC holders less to think about when they seek access to fresh and affordable produce.