Newest articles on The Sacramento Press tagged as "healthy food access"

Local farmers share tips for fall and winter cooking

2011-10-21T03:42:56Z

As the leaves change color and the weather changes, the yield in the local farmers markets gracefully transforms from the delicious grab-and-eat summer fruits to a generous variety of squash, root vegetables and leafy greens that require a little bit of heat before eating.

With the smaller variety of produce in the local markets during fall and winter, it’s easy to fall back on the same recipes when cooking every night.

The Sacramento Press asked local farmers at the markets for some of their favorite cooking ideas for the fall and winter harvest, and they had a medley of suggestions.

Carolyn McCormack of McCormack Farms in Walnut Grove is finishing her end-of-summer pear harvest and said she often makes pear tarts this time of year.

“It’s five minutes of prep time, and it tastes like it came from a French bakery,” she said.

McCormack said she prefers to use Bartlett pears or red pears. After peeling and slicing the pears in half, she lays them cut-side down on a pie crust in a pan.

For the custard, she mixes one quarter of a cup of flour, one cup of sugar, one teaspoon of vanilla, two eggs, and one quarter of a cup of melted butter into a bowl and pours the mixture over the top of the pears. The tart bakes at 325 degrees for one hour.

Most markets will be out of pears by the end of the month, she added, though you could make the tart with apples if you slice them thinner, and consumers may still find Asian pears in the markets through November.

Throughout autumn and the early winter, the markets will be overflowing with an assortment of squash. Squash can be steamed, roasted, boiled and then pureed into a soup, and some even sauteed. Squash with a thicker rind is usually cooked first, such as pumpkins, kabocha squash and banana squash, and those with thinner skin can be peeled during preparation.

“Winter squash is a good comfort food,” said Rob Montgomery of Rob’s Natural Produce in Durham, Calif. He said he primarily likes to bake acorn squash with a little bit of butter and cinnamon, and it tastes a bit like sweet potatoes, though almost any squash tastes good cooked that way. The squash can be baked at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes.

Shirley Kiele of Shared Abundance Organic Farm in Auburn said her favorite type of squash is butternut squash and that there are several ways to cook it.

One of the ways, she said, is to roast it.

“You cut it into slices or little cubes and you roast it in the oven. Some people like to put brown sugar or butter or something on it – I like to just roast it by itself with a little bit of olive oil,” she said.

Another way to prepare the butternut squash is to puree it and make butternut soup. Kiele said that to make the soup she steams the squash after cubing and then puts it into a blender with onions, garlic, and a little bit of cayenne. The squash could be boiled as well, but it would take on excess water.

Montgomery said spaghetti squash can be used as a substitute for pasta noodles because when boiled, the squash separates in strands that resemble noodles.

To cook, cut the squash in half and remove the seeds. Bake at a minimum of 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes or boil in a pot until tender and then use a fork to rake the stringy flesh out of the rind.

“You can use them any way you would use noodles,” he said. “It’s kind of like noodles with a zucchini flavor, and it’s a sweet squash,” he added, and the “noodles” go fine as just a side dish with butter on it.

Along the lines of gluten-free, low-carb dishes, Stephanie Martinelli, of Martinelli Hood Ranch in Hood, Calif., said she likes to make health-conscious dishes, with no carbohydrates or starch, and she makes a lasagna that replaces lasagna noodles with zucchini.

To make the lasagna, Martinelli said she typically slices the zucchini into half-inch strips, making sure they’re fairly even.

You get about five slices per zucchini, she said, and depending on the size of your pan, you would want to make three or four zucchini layers, she said.

To assemble, alternate layering the pan with traditional tomato sauce – mixed with the meat of choice – and the zucchini slices until the pan is filled. Cover with foil and bake at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes, and remove the foil 10 minutes before the lasagna is done.

Martinelli said she also likes to make acorn squash stuffed with onions, meat and rice. She halves the squash, drizzles it with salt and pepper and bakes it at 350 degrees for 30 to 45 minutes, and then stuffs it with the cooked meat, onions and rice.

A great variety of leafy greens also last throughout the cold season, including mustard greens, collard greens, chard and lettuce.

Andy Rogers, proprietor of Palermo County’s “R” Farm, said he likes to stay traditional with the greens using a Southern-style method of an added ham hock or bacon.

“Just chop them up, put onions, garlic and some kind of a pork product and just boil them down – just collards and throw the kale in at the end,” he said.

Collard greens usually take about 45 minutes to cook on a medium to high temperature.

As for chard – Rogers said he has a great recipe.

Rogers said he boils the chard leaves whole for about 15 minutes, puts them in a colander and presses the water out of them. Then. in an 8-inch-by-8-inch pan, he layers the chard leaves, his favorite Italian dressing, feta cheese and bacon bits “like lasagna” and covers and puts it in the refrigerator for an hour, though, he usually leaves it overnight.

Rogers said he then cuts the chard-lasagna into squares “like brownies” and serves it like a salad.

The winter harvest may seem a bit daunting to some, but bad weather outside strikes up an opportunity to delve into new dishes and many ingredients will be available at the local farmers markets throughout the winter.

For information on which markets will be open for the winter, click here.

Many farmers' markets turn in for winter while few remain

2011-10-13T04:56:17Z

Throughout the summer, access to fresh and local produce has been offered in several locations around Sacramento, but the change of the season means less availability as many farmers markets close until May or June.

The remaining markets for the year:

Open All Year

Sacramento Central Certified Farmers’ Market
Eighth and W
8 a.m. to noon Sunday

Sacramento Florin CFM
Florin road and 65th St
8 a.m. to noon Thursday

Sacramento Country Club Plaza CFM
Watt and El Camino Avenues
8 a.m. to noon Saturday

Open through October

Sacramento Chavez Plaza CFM
10th and J streets
10 a.m. to 2 p.m. Wednesday

Del Paso Heights CFM
Norwood Avenue and San Juan Road
7:30 a.m. to noon Saturday

Natomas CFM
New Market Drive- Inderkum High School parking lot
9 a.m. to noon

Oak Park Farmers’ Market
McClatchy Park at 35th St and 5th Ave
9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday

Open through November

Sacramento Kaiser CFM
Cottage Way and Morse Avenue
9:30 a.m. to 1 p.m.

Only a few farmers' markets actually stay open through winter. Some farmers said the reason for this is the change in weather and how it affects the crop yield for the season.

“Usually (in the winter) you have less shoppers – lots to do with the weather – (and) we don’t like coming out in the rain and standing around,” said Patrick Hoover, owner of Patrick’s Garden, located in Placer County. “A lot of the farmers don’t have anything in the winter. A lot of farming is seasonal, so the markets are seasonal.”

Joany Titherington, coordinator for the Oak Park Farmers' Market, said that the Oak Park market, currently held in McClatchy Park, will close for the winter because it has no covered structure to shield the customers, farmers and their produce from the rain.

Martin Bates, stall manager for Capay Organic, said that the demand for more farmer's markets has gone down in Sacramento over the years.

"I think Sacramentans are just sensitive to weather. When it's cold, I notice, there's just less traffic – folks will stay in their offices or stay at home whereas, say in San Francisco, where it's always 59 degrees, folks are just acclimated and they come out and shop."

Renae Best, co-coordinator for Certified Farmers' Markets of Sacramento, said that since the yield is smaller in the winter, supply runs out for the winter.

“Farmers don’t have enough supply to go to several markets each week,” she said.

Hoover said that a break from the crops isn’t usually his choice, just resultant of the 3,000-foot elevation and snow in his area.

“You can’t grow all the summer produce in the winter, and you’re limited,” he said. “You get more during the summer – there’s more daylight hours. You need a certain amount of temperatures and a certain amount of daylight.”

Of the 13 local markets in the summer, only three are open all year round.

Though many of the summer’s markets have already closed down for the winter and won’t reopen again until late spring, a few other markets will remain open through the rest of the month.

The Oak Park market will only be open once more – from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. Saturday – and the Chavez Plaza market will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. each Wednesday until the end of the month.

For more information on the Sacramento Certified Farmer’s Markets, click here.

Environmental activists present strategies to build community

2011-10-07T06:58:02Z

Neighborhood streets and intersections in Portland, Ore. have become public gathering places and people have reported that they’ve felt much safer in their communities, a testament to community building through the City Repair project – the topic of Mark Lakeman and Marisha Auerbach’s presentation on Permaculture in an urban context Wednesday night, hosted by the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-op.

City Repair is a small grassroots nonprofit organization, founded in 1995 in Portland by a group of neighbors, that facilitates multiple “placemaking projects” geared toward reclaiming one's neighborhood and inspiring alternative ways to think about what it means to have a community gathering space and to put those thoughts into action.

The night's presentation featured a “how-to” examination of the multiple strategies neighborhoods have taken to engage with one another and build a safer and more self-sustaining community in the hopes of inspiring others to make a change in their neighborhoods, even here in Sacramento.

“What do you think we did in the space between our houses before cars existed? What we don’t do anymore – talk,” Lakeman said as he began the presentation.

Lakeman is the founder and promoter of many community building initiatives in Portland, Ore. including City Repair and The ReBuilding Center, and Marissa Auerbach is an active practitioner and teacher of Permaculture – an ecological design system modeled on the relationships built in nature.

The two have been traveling around California for the past two weeks, their 26th and final city being Sacramento, presenting on the topic – Village Alchemy: Permaculture Strategies for Transforming the Urban Environment. The presentation highlighted their collaboration in City Repair in the hopes that others would be inspired to create the same type of change in their neighborhoods as well.

“Portland, like everywhere else, has been beset by an absence of gathering spaces,” Lakeman said. The presentation focused on the sustainability behind the relationships humans can build with each other, and the problems they have building and maintaining such relationships with the modern design of the city block.

The presentation oscillated between Lakeman’s City Repair Project and Auerbach’s experience in several community Permaculture projects, which include garden installations, seed saving and growing food year-round in both urban and rural locations.

Auerbach has been collaborating with City Repair since 2005 and has assisted in the installation of many gardens and community projects in Haiti, Nicaragua and Vietnam.

One way of enhancing community, Auerbach said, is sharing a meal with people.

“I want to encourage more people to interact with their food system,” she said, “Everyone expects food to come from the country and it doesn’t have to be so.”

The vision behind City Repair is simple: in city blocks based on the grid structure, it’s more common for people to become isolated and not know their neighbors, Lakeman explained, their lives have become “zoned.” Lines are drawn between workplaces and living space, much in the same way lines have been drawn between each other in a community. Through its projects, City Repair seeks to return the communal gathering spaces of communication back to the neighborhoods.

“Everyone from the world came from a village network,” Lakeman said. “Our blocks no longer have open spaces, even though our ancestors lived that way.”

He explained the structure of a village as a circle, before what is now recognizable as “the grid” came into place. The circle represented a community gathering space through which networks were created as people went about their daily lives, crossing paths with each other.

The imposition of the grid came into place in 1785 when an ordinance was passed placing the Roman Colonial Grid over any towns to the west of the Ohio River.

Featuring Permaculture and natural building techniques, the City Repair Project seeks to put the circle back on top of the grid. Composed almost completely of volunteers, the organization sets up events each year called “intersection repair,” which helps communities reclaim their neighborhoods for a day, turning the nearest residential intersection into a community gathering space.

For each project, neighbors in a community gather to come up with a design for their intersection that most often includes painting the intersection and building amenities to place on each corner, with each neighborhood telling a different story.

Corner installations from past projects include community gardens, cob benches – naturally built structures comprised of clay, sand, and straw – a communal library made from scratch, a tea house, a puppet theater for neighborhood children and many others.

“With each of these installations, each person leaves with their own idea and inspiration,” Auerbach said.

Stemming from the first “intersection repair”, more than 300 neighborhoods have reclaimed their neighborhoods and the vision has grown nationwide and even internationally with similar intersection repair projects completed.

About 15 persons were in attendance, and many who left the presentation that night said they are looking forward to implementing similar projects in Sacramento.

“I think Sacramento has a lot more potential than it realizes,” said Dominic Allarmano, 34, an educator and facilitator from Sacramento. “There’s a lot of life force here, but the people right now aren’t really connected to each other that much yet. The neighborhoods don’t oftentimes have that character – it’s not in the rhythms and patterns of life here yet.”

Allarmano said that he previously lived in Oregon and knew about the project, and he is excited to get something similar going in Sacramento.

“I’m just really lit up that this is happening in other cities across America, and we need it to happen here in Sacramento,” said Tara Sheen, 46, from Pleasant Grove, also in attendance. “We have great community here; this would be easily done. It just needs to be presented.”

Sheen added that she is involved with the Permaculture movement in Sacramento and that similar projects can be implemented in Sacramento.

“There’s some good people that would be willing to come on our side that have already been trying to make stuff happen here,” she said.

Wrapping up the last night of their speaking tour, both presenters said that they hoped to inspire others to implement community building projects in their cities and that all it takes is a little motivation to get it started.

“I think that there’s a whole host of options of how people can choose to gracefully adapt to the future, but it requires stepping up and looking at what your needs are and how you can meet them using what you have,”Auerbach said.

Lakeman said that he hoped the presentation planted a seed and gave everyone a bit of insight on how they might be able to go about change in their communities.

“I would just say to Sacramento: Start anywhere you want. You will change the world, just start wherever it makes sense to you,” Lakeman said after the presentation. “Our communities are not engaged, so all these things are going wrong, and every one of those situations is an opportunity for somebody to get involved and turn it into right livelihood.”

For more information on the City Repair project and the work that has been done in several cities, including Los Angeles, click here or see them on Facebook.

City chicken ordinance passed by City Council

2011-08-31T07:23:36Z

The City Council passed the backyard hen-keeping ordinance after nearly two years of discussion in an 8-0 vote Tuesday night.

The ordinance, set to take effect November 1, will allow people within city limits to keep up to three hens in their backyard as long as the enclosure is 20 feet away from the nearest neighboring residence, and a license fee of $10 per household and permit fee of $15 per chicken is paid annually.

To read the ordinance, click here.

After 18 members of the community spoke in support of the council adopting the ordinance, and two in opposition, all members of the council voted in favor of adopting the ordinance except one, councilman Darrell Fong, who was not present at the meeting due to a family vacation.

Councilwomen Angelique Ashby, Sandy Sheedy and Bonnie Pannell said that they still have concerns about passing the ordinance, but that they will pass it, holding their caution, and check back in six months.

“I am willing to give it a chance; I’m willing to make sure that we have a report back so that we know it’s working or that it isn’t working, and we can make a final decision at that time,” Sheedy said.

Ashby said her concern was around the question of enforcement, which Reina Schwartz, director for the Department of Animal Care Services, said will be based on complaints by neighbors.

“We either need to do some education, or we need to make sure that the ordinance can be enforced, because we have a quality-of-life issue here on both sides. I want to give people that opportunity,” Ashby said, “but I don’t want that decision to have a negative impact on the quality of life for people who don’t want to have chickens in their backyard.”

Kenneth Caldwell, a resident of Land Park, was one of the few who spoke up in opposition to the ordinance, stating findings from research he conducted on the possible problems that could come from raising chickens in the city. One reason he gave was that chickens could be carriers for a number of diseases, including Avian Influenza and Coccidia.

“Coccidia is a parasite that chickens can contract and can be tracked through their feces,” he said, “The ordinance only indicates that it has to be contained where it can’t smell, and gotten rid of in some appropriate manner,” which he said will end up in our garbage cans, our streets, and then our water.”

Charles Luce, a chemist with a background in antibiotic research who has spoken up in the past in opposition to the ordinance, said, “Hong Kong has a ban- the reason is that they are afraid for the disease to be mutated and translated easily.” If it is, he added, it would be the worst epidemic ever.

“(This disease) has been circulating in Asia since 2003,” said Dr. Glenna Trochet, the county’s Public Health Officer. “It is very deadly, but the likelihood that chickens who are covered is low, and they would need to be exposed to the feces of wild birds.”

Experts she has consulted with multiple times on the topic also added that if the virus were to become transmissible between human beings, it would be brought to the United States by the people.

Many who spoke were for the passing of the ordinance, and multiple representatives of CLUCK (Campaign for the Legalization of Chicken Keeping) spoke at the meeting on the environmental benefits of raising chickens, as well as the sustainability practices it promotes through the education behind where one’s food comes from.

“Yolks from fresh eggs are more nutritious and less expensive in these difficult economic times,” said Joe Calavita, a member of CLUCK. “Chickens can live on one bag of feed and landowners have gardens- you can use that for organic manure. Chickens also eat bugs which eliminates the need for pesticides.”

Councilman Steve Cohn, who has been working with advocacy groups like CLUCK for the last two years, commended everyone who spoke on either side of the issue, and thanked the supporters of the ordinance for their patience.

“I’m glad that we’re finally here,” he said, commenting on the long haul everyone on the council went through to get the ordinance passed, “it’s certainly consistent with the city’s sustainability plan.”

Urban farming could nest with city chicken ordinance

2011-08-26T05:47:15Z

The City Council has brought back to the table an ordinance that would allow Sacramento residents to keep chickens in backyards in the city.

The ordinance has been set aside since February’s Law and Legislation Committee meeting for drafting and was passed for publication at Tuesday night’s council meeting.

This means that the drafted document for the ordinance is available to the public for viewing from either the city’s website or in person from City Hall.

The ordinance would only allow for hens to be kept in residents’ backyards so long as they are confined in a pen, coop, cage or other type of enclosure at all times and the enclosures are maintained at a distance of 20 feet from a neighboring house.

Neither roosters nor the slaughtering of the hens are to be a part of the equation.

If passed by the council at next Tuesday’s meeting, the ordinance will allow residents in the city to raise up to three hens in their backyard under a permit that must be renewed annually.

“This is something a lot of progressive cities are doing, and it fits in with our overall goals of sustainability and healthier food access,” said Councilman Steve Cohn.

Cohn said he has been pushing for the ordinance to be adopted since last year along with an advocacy group called CLUCK, the Campaign for the Legalization of Urban Chicken Keeping.

“It just makes sense,” said Susan Ballew, a representative of CLUCK. “People want to have more control over their food source. Having fresh eggs from your chickens is an extension of that,” she added.

“They’re not just for eggs,” said Joe Calavita, another member of CLUCK, “They’re pets, too. It’s very nice to have that contact with the animal.”

Previous concerns have included the amount of money and manpower the Department of Animal Care Services has that will be needed to enforce the regulations. The ordinance states that the enforcement will be based on complaints only, and an annual license fee of $10 per chicken and a $15 permit fee per household will be charged to help cover the estimated cost of staff.

Another concern was the possibility of a surge of urban chicken farming bringing the avian influenza to the city, a virus most commonly found in birds.

Tim Carpenter, a professor at UC Davis in the Center for Animal Disease Modeling and Surveillance, said that there is a possibility, but the probability of this virus in the United States is incredibly low.

“The only time we’ve seen humans being infected by avian flu was in Asia, but they’ve got a different strain we haven’t seen over here,” he said, adding that he sees no reason for concern in the near future.

“Some people think it’s not something you should have in the city,” Calavita said.

“It’s like any other animal you take into your household – there’s a lot of responsibility,” Ballew said.

“Any handling with animals is potentially harmful,” Carpenter said, “but if people wash their hands regularly, it shouldn’t be a problem.”

Other concerns have been voiced over possible noise disruptions from the chickens, though many that are for the ordinance to be passed say that the noise level couldn’t compare to noise disruptions from other animals in the neighborhoods.

Taking into account these noise disruptions, many still say the noise level from a three-hen limit can hardly compare to the noise level from the seven-cat-or-dog limit that is allowed now.

It’s a bit short-sighted, given that chickens cluck quietly when you have a neighbor with dogs that bark incessantly, and having them enclosed at all times is very conservative, Calavita added.

Ballew said that CLUCK views the three-chicken limit as a compromise, adding that a big burden will be lifted from those who already have chickens.

“We don’t want something where it’s sent back for more changes,” Calavita said, “whether it’s three or five chickens, I’m happy.”

“Maybe regulations will have to be reviewed over time,” Cohn said. “We are willing to listen to people on all sides to come up with the best parameters.”

Cohn said he thinks the ordinance will pass, with some debate over the precise regulations.

“If more people can have that experience with the connection of where their food comes from, we’re better off as people,” Calavita said.

The public is encouraged to review the proposed ordinance and is welcome to comment at the City Council meeting on Tuesday.

To view the ordinance, click here.

Garden boxes in South Sacramento grow community, healthy food

2011-07-26T04:26:35Z

The nonprofit organization Ubuntu Green is literally planting seeds of change within the Sacramento community, nearing completion of the first year of its Home and Community Gardens Project.

The project seeks to provide low-income families in the Building Healthy Communities target area with healthier access to food and to create a greater sense of community in the selected neighborhoods.

For more information on BHC, click here.

Building Healthy Communities is a coalition comprised of many different community-driven organizations that are all funded by California’s largest foundation--The California Endowment. The BHC seeks to implement a ten-year plan to renew the health in children and families in fourteen communities throughout California, and South Sacramento is one of them.

The Building Healthy Communities target area encompasses much of South Sacramento, including sections of Oak Park, Tahoe Park, Lemon Hill and Colonial and Fruitridge Manor.

For a map of the BHC targeted area, click here.

With 26 completed to date, the project is set to install four more gardens by the end of September, two of which will add to the four existing gardens at Sacramento High School in late August, and is seeking to establish 30 more by September 2012.

The project began in 2009 as a campaign for the development of community gardens in Sacramento and evolved into a system of private home and community gardens with the partnership of multiple community organizations including Alchemist CDC and Rafael Aguilera of Sacramento Yard Farmer.

Feb. 26 marked the beginning of the project upon which six gardens were built at four sites in the initial effort to “create a community of folks who grow their own food,” said Charles Mason, the founder of Ubuntu Green.

The way the system works

After receiving contact from families living in the BHC-targeted area, Ubuntu Green chooses recipients of the gardens, prioritized on a greatest-need basis. This need is assessed from the area of the household, whether or not it is in the target BHC area, and from their website, "families that are already receiving or have received services from green and sustainable organizations in the area."

If approved for the project, Mason or Sacramento Yard Farmer Rafael Aguilera begin with a site assessment in which they decide the best placement for the garden box in the recipients’ yard, taking into consideration how much sun an area receives daily as well as the space allotted for the garden.

The recipient of the box then decides on the plants to begin the bed with based on the season and a date for the build.

A raised bed, typically 3 feet by 8 feet, is built by the yard farmer and a crew of volunteers. The bed is made of redwood to avoid contamination in the soil. Drip irrigation and a timer are installed and local farms and nurseries provide the organic soil and compost, plant starts and seeds.

The recipients are given a tutorial on gardening and quarterly packets complete with healthy food recipes and a list of places where families can access healthy foods including local stores and farmers markets. The packets are distributed in English, Hmong, Spanish and Vietnamese but are available in other languages on request.

After the build, residents care for their own gardens and can contact Ubuntu Green at any time with questions or concerns. When the next planting season comes around, residents again choose what they want to grow based on the season.

According to Mercado whose family owns two beds, the first bed has no cost for families in the BHC-targeted area, and some homes have purchased a second.

Community Feedback

Many homes and businesses have received the garden boxes to date, including the Boys and Girls Club, Sacramento High School and Old Soul Co.

Alberto Mercado, project coordinator for Building Healthy Communities and resident of Oak Park, was one of the first to receive a garden box in his front yard. The project suggests the placement of the garden in one’s front yard since it will have more visibility to the community than if it were installed elsewhere.

“Each person can affect at least five people,” Mason said.

Mercado and Mason agree. Both have front yard gardens that have influenced neighbors to join the program.

“I never really gardened, and it was from seeing what he grew that inspired me,” said Steve Gonzalez, an Oak Park resident and Mason’s neighbor. Gonzalez received a garden box about six months ago but installed it in his back yard due to the amount of shade in his front yard.

One aim of the program is to install the garden boxes in clusters in small neighborhoods, a method of creating community and meeting the people who live in your area, Mason said.

Duggan Irish, chef operator at Old Soul Co., called it “urban renewal … projects centered around building a type of community,” he said, “It’s the physicality of the labor – know what you’re cooking with because you grew it.” Duggan said he will use ingredients from the garden in the Old Soul kitchen if it produces enough.

The type of community that is slowly growing throughout Oak Park and South Sacramento “brings you back to your roots,” Gonzalez said.

The program has yielded significant changes throughout the many households it has become a part of.

“As adults, we take for granted where the food comes from and who grew it,” Mercado said, we’re “always looking for places to find healthy food but we have to go far. . . you grow it in your own home you’re reducing your Carbon Footprint.”

The program ultimately seeks to build at least 300 home and community gardens by 2013, half of which will be given to low-income households.

“To understand the sustainability behind the food you grow,” Irish said.

To summarize, with more home and community gardens, there will be less of a need to travel far for food in Sacramento.

“People think they are defenseless against this thing called climate change. People don’t think they can impact the environment. Yes you can,” said Mason.

Anyone who is interested in participating in the Home Garden Project or in volunteering may contact Ubuntu Green by visiting its website.

Projects underway for Building Healthy Communities

2011-07-22T07:11:16Z

Residential communities in Oak Park and South Sacramento are in good hands under the umbrella of the Sacramento Building Healthy Communities coalition for funding programs and collectives geared towards making Sacramento safer and healthier.

Several projects funded by the BHC are underway to create healthier food access for low-income families, better transportation, and safer neighborhoods by engaging youth in community service and leadership training.

Projects already initiated include an EBT dollar-for-dollar match incentive at the local Oak Park farmer’s market, assistance in building a home or community garden, and teaching youth the basics of news writing and reporting on issues in their community.

The coalition met Wednesday night for its quarterly Hub meeting—formed to create a network between all members of the community in an act to discuss and implement solutions. The meeting addressed several of the social, economic and health inequities facing teens and communities in South Sacramento and Oak Park. Some of these issues included childhood obesity, high-risk youth and gang-related violence, healthier food access and more available health care coverage for low-income families.

Sacramento Building Healthy Communities is an initiative funded by the California Endowment that strives to promote healthier choices in specified low-income neighborhoods. This is achieved through collaboration with stakeholders—those who hold the highest interest in the success of the community— including schools, businesses, community-oriented organizations, residents, law enforcement agencies and others.

Seventy-two members of the community attended the meeting, including City Councilman Jay Schenirer, to learn of some of the new developments in the community that are being implemented by several grantees of the coalition. Of the presentations, youth leadership development and engagement was a main theme for the night.

“We are working on creating a youth steering committee,” said Alberto Mercado, project coordinator for Building Healthy Communities and staff member of Asian Resources. “They’re the ones who are going to be here in 10 years,” he said.

The youth would be “kind of advisers to us,” said Francisco Gutierrez, community relations intern for BHC, stressing the matter that the youth know what’s happening in their communities, and the BHC merely assisting them in their solutions.

The coalition is already funding several organizations and programs which serve to engage more youth in the targeted area in leadership programs such as La Familia and People Reaching Out.

Grantees of the BHC include People Reaching Out, Legal Services of Northern California, Sacramento City Unified School District, Community Service Planning Council, and Panacea Services, Inc.

Bobby Powell with the Boys and Girls Club and Nina Harris from Will. C. Wood Middle School were two youth leaders present at the meeting and already set to join more leadership groups. Powell writes for a blog for the California Endowment called “Bobby’s Blog” through which he shares his experiences in his youth leadership with the rest of the community.

Harris presented with People Reaching Out, a nonprofit organization that addresses youth substance abuse and violence, and talked about an activity the organization has where the youth involved take pictures around their community, documenting what they believe needs to be changed.

“It helps students see what’s wrong with the community,” Harris said.

The Regional Transit Authority was present, accepting suggestions from community members on how to improve the transit system.

Other presentations of the night included groups that received local discretionary grants from the BHC which allow quarterly grants “available to groups that can’t find funding anywhere else,” Gutierrez said.

Hub discretionary grants are small-amount grants up to $2000 that are available to any nonprofit organization, local collective, or public school that uses volunteer efforts and community service to improve the health of its community. This funding is also available for art and cultural projects which seek to engage youth in positive service in their communities.

The new grant deadline for discretionary grants is set for Sept.17. Prospective applicants can find more information on the website (link at the bottom).

Recipients of the discretionary grants included the Sacramento Black Chamber of Commerce, The Gardens, Tahoe Colonial Collaborative, Sacramento Food Bank and Family Services, Alchemist Community Development, Oak Park Neighborhood Association, Language Academy of Sacramento, Prevention Works and Mien Club.

“Those programs are always left behind,” Mercado said, further commenting that some groups are small and don’t have as much outreach as larger organizations to be recognized by larger grant programs.

Alchemist, a subcontractor of Soil Born Farms, provides interactive and engaging activities for youth to convene on food access projects around the community. Alchemist was only one of the many groups present at the meeting that provide engaging services for youth to act as leaders in their own communities.

“If we can give them the tools and the space, they will become the leaders of tomorrow,” Mercado said.

Building Healthy Communities meetings are open to the public and there are numerous volunteer opportunities to get involved with the programs in the coalition. For more information visit:

http://www.mycalconnect.org/sacramento/Default.aspx