A celebration ensues!

On Friday the 12th, Roots of Peace held its first major event of the season, a community potluck dinner and documentary showing at the garden and on the adjacent park, Bedford Green. Over fifty gardeners and community members came together over home-cooked dishes, some of which included produce harvested last week right from the garden! The celebration started with dinner and garden tours, and was capped by a showing of  "A Thousand Suns", a documentary film about the Gamo tribe of Ethiopia and its centuries-old sustainable farming practices.
The beautiful, cool evening was slightly bittersweet; as the summer comes to a close, Merry and I prepare to leave Staten Island to continue university classes. The potluck provided a great opportunity to reflect on the establishment and growth of the garden in the past few summer months, and to spend time with the members of Stapleton who will continue to grow food and create friendships there. As the two of us start our last week at Roots of Peace, it's a comfort to know that the garden has been, and will continue to be, in caring hands.

Stapleton Meets Mother Nature

On Monday the garden harvested an eggplants, a dozen hot peppers, cherry tomatoes and radishes. Our gardeners were so excited to see their hard work and patients pay off. When people harvest their crops for the first time they always have this magical reaction, almost disbelief. It seems almost to good to be true that the tiny seeds they planted months ago gave way to healthy plants. Its the most direct way to see our planet at work. Gardening allows people to see the connection between their work and nature's work. Trust me the payoff can be huge, we have eggplants to prove it.

This Friday the garden is celebrating its first open season with a community potluck. We are using a liberal definition of community and opening up our gates to anyone that feels moved to come by. I hope to see many new and familiar faces. Maybe some of this season's harvest will even end up in some of the dishes!

Rain, Rain

After the success at last week's BBQ we are planning another at tonight's workday. This part of the summer has allowed me to lay back and literally enjoy the fruits of our labor. With all the raised beds built, soil shipped and seeds sowed I have gotten to sit back and watch our plants grow. I've also gotten to enjoy meeting new community members everyday. On Wednesday 4:30pm sharp the sky opened up and started to rain. Usually I would pack things up and retreat inside almost mechanically, but this time I was genuinely disappointed. Rain means that most of our members take the day in the garden off, meaning I won't get to see them and talk with them. The people in this neighborhood have been so kind and generous. With only two weeks left I invite every opportunity I get to see them.

Below is a preview of tonight's BBQ. I will be making pumpkin brownies, by replacing the eggs and oil in a regular boxed brownie mix, with a can of pumpkin. It's really easy and tasty.

1 Box Brownie Mix

1 Can Pumpkin

Preheat oven according to directions on brownie box. Combine pumpkin and brownie mix. Mix until smooth. Place mixture in a greased tray (4x12) and cook for approximately half an hour. The cook time may be more or less depending on the size of the tray and the type of brownie mix.

Zucchini Cookie Recipe

Last week the garden hosted a last minute BBQ. Some of our members contributed hotdogs, burgers, drinks and even a grill. Once the grill got going lots of community members followed their noses into the garden. We had plenty of food and even harvested some basil to top off our burgers. I contributed some zucchini cookies which pleasantly surprised everyone. Adding veggies, like zucchini to cake, muffin, brownie and cookie recipes is a great way to cut down on saturated fats and add in vitamins and minerals.

Zucchini Cookies:

1/4 cup butter, softened

1/2 cup brown sugar

2 tablespoons honey

1 cup grated zucchini

1 egg

2 cups all purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

1 teaspoon cinnamon

1 teaspoon nutmeg

Preheat oven to 375

Add the butter and sugar, beat until creamy. Beat in the egg and honey then stir in zucchini.

In a separate bowl combine flour, sugar, baking soda, salt, cinnamon and nutmeg. Gradually add flour mixture to wet mixture and stir until well blended. Chill the dough for 1 hour OR freeze for 15-20 minutes. Scoop teaspoon size balls of batter onto a greased cookie sheet and bake for 8-10 minutes.

Vegetables and Visitors

A busy week with many guest!

With Margaret off on vacation the garden was short a hand this week. Lucky for me, I had some great friends come and help out. Three of my friends from Connecticut College will be making an appearance in the garden and offer some of their gardening expertise to the project.

We also began to the process of handing the garden over to the community this week. On Monday night I met with a few, committed garden members to discuss the future of The Roots of Peace Garden. There enthusiasm assured me that the Roots of Peace Garden will live on after I leave and continue to have a positive impact on the community.

This week also welcomed new eggplants, peppers and ripe tomatoes. We had two tomatoes and three peppers harvested on Monday!

If a garden could talk...

We have now been in business at the Roots of Peace Community Garden for over a month and a half. With all necessities in place (soil, plants and raised beds) we are starting to beautify the space. This past week we added some hydrangeas and holly along our back fence. A local landscaper even showed us how to use bamboo in the garden and how to keep it under control (I still have my reservations.)

With all have-to's aside its been nice to sit back and really get to know the community members better. I'm learning everyone's styles of work. Turns out you can really tell a lot about a person from their garden plot!

Some Pictures

New Yorker of the Week

Check out the NY1 segment that aired this weekend:

http://www.ny1.com/content/features/142514/nyer-of-the-week--student-brings-staten-island-community-garden-to-life?ap=1&MP4

The Big Picture..

After learning the ins and outs of the NYC subway system I made it to the launch of Change by Us NYC, a website that connects New Yorkers to share ideas and create projects that improve the city. The speakers were from grassroots organizations, that have put huge amounts of time, effort and passion into projects that have improved the lives and well-being of New Yorkers. After hearing some of the speakers talk about their well established projects and organizations, it made me realize how easy it is to loose sight of the big picture. What I mean is the overall objective, in our case improving the health and atmosphere of a community in Staten Island that has been to frequently overlooked. I find myself getting caught up in small details and daily trials and tribulations. Its important to pull back and see all we have accomplished in the month the Roots of Peace Garden has been opened. A month ago the space couldn't even be called a garden and now we have tomatoes, eggplants and peppers thanks to the support of the community.

Group meeting tonight 7:30 pm at the YMCA Counseling Services Center (285 Vanderbilt Ave. SI, New York 10304) Come for deserts, dialogue and garden news!

Don't be fooled...

Transplants are like magic. One day, there was barely anything growing in the garden, and the next, it's full of 18 inch peppers and tomatoes. Are we suddenly gardening masters who have figured out how to make mature plants grow overnight? No, those are indeed the transplants that we delivered last week from New Jersey. However! The most exciting thing (so far) this week is that the seeds that were sowed last week by the fleet of volunteer gardeners at one of the evening work days are now starting to appear! Upon our visit to the garden yesterday to do some much needed watering, we noticed tons of beans, carrots, radishes, cucumbers, and okra beginning to sprout out of the soil. So begins the lives of the first plants sowed directly at Roots of Peace! Excitement abounds.

New transplants are in!

Hi all,

We successfully delivered transplants from the New Jersey greenhouse, including sweet and hot peppers, eggplants, herbs, and tomatoes. After a few days in the ground, these plants are getting used to their new homes and appear to be enjoying their first few days in the outdoors. Some of the tomato and pepper plants are already starting to fruit (pictures to follow...)! Yesterday was a lot of tomato plant-pruning, a task that feels a little bit like plant murder if you're not used to it, but it'll help the tall, gangly plants stay strong and fruitful. A few new gardeners sowed seeds directly into the soil, and we're all excited to see them come up.

We're certainly starting to develop a more regular routine in the garden each workday, a large part of which is setting up the long garden hose to water the plants. Our workdays lately have been well attended, which makes chores like this one much easier! With the holiday weekend coming up, we're looking for someone to water the new transplants- anyone interested?

Hope to see you Friday at 4:30!

Margaret

Some pictures from our third week...

Plants are in the ground!

Hi, all!

Today was a big, big day for the garden. We held our normal Friday workday hours from 4:30-7:30, and had a great turnout. Nearly fifteen community members and prospective gardeners came out on this drizzly afternoon to prepare more of the beds for planting! We resolved our soil shortage problem with a mixture of compost and mulch in each bed. Two of the plots are now home to several tomato seedlings, and many more seedlings are on their way from New Jersey this Monday. It was certainly an encouraging workday, we hope to keep the momentum going and the spirits high!

Tomorrow is our first Saturday morning workday, and will take place from 8:30-10:30. Hope to see you there!

Soil, Compost, and Mulch. Oh, my!

We received three very important deliveries yesterday. Merry and her sister Robyn traveled to Queens early yesterday morning to pick up our soil donation from Green Thumb at their garden compound. We stuck around the garden in the early afternoon to receive a HEFTY batch of mulch, courtesy of a local landscaping company, and then drove to the Fresh Kills Compost Site to pick up a truckload of rich, organic compost. A mixture of these three materials will fill each of our raised beds to create a thriving environment for our plants. Once the beds are filled, we'll begin to transport and transplant our seedlings from New Jersey, and begin to seed even more veggies and herbs directly into the soil.

Our two remaining workdays this week, tonight at 4:30 and Friday at 4:30, will require much help. Please stop by if you are free! We promise a fun, messy time.

Two Weeks In...

The end of another busy, productive week. We now have all our beds built and ready to be filled with compost, soil and plants. I love looking at the property every morning and seeing how much it has changed since day one. A friendly neighbor shared some photos of the how the property looked two years ago. What a change! It used to be used as a dump for unwanted VCRs, glass bottles and other household items. We even uncovered some digging around this week. I'm glad that this project is allowing the whole community to take action in beautifying a shared space.

I've grown attached to the property myself and can't seem to go a day without at lease walking through the garden and pulling up a few weeds. With father's day tomorrow Margaret and I are back in New Jersey. I'm having a bit of separation anxiety from not being able to check up on the garden. I'm looking forward to getting our seedlings in the ground by Wednesday next week (fingering crossed!)

Picture 1: Our first shipment of lumber!

Picture 2: The property in 2009

Busy Day at Roots of Peace

Hello All! Another busy day in the garden. We started the day in the garden with two big shipments of lumber and supplies. It was a great feeling to see all our price bargaining pay off in the form of wood, a shed, landscaping fabric and nails. After the shipments were unloaded and the shed quickly assembled community members arrived for our first workshop of the season. The workshop was about gardening in the three seasons of New York and provided us with some new knowledge and new connections in the community. Both important things. Later in the evening we returned to the garden to assemble some raised beds with the help of two of Margaret's close friends from Bates College. By the end of the night we had all the cuts made and seven beds assembled. Thirteen to go!

Mulch and Lumber- Hooray!

Happy Monday, garden followers!

Following the success of the ribbon cutting ceremony on Saturday, Merry and I arrived at the garden this morning with a new sense of energy and pride. Today, we finished weeding the major pathways between the raised bed spaces, although we know that weeding is a job that will never be finished. We began mulching, which is a process we are both very excited to continue. It's amazing how much the space has evolved in the past 10 days, and how much more positive change is to come. We're receiving a shipment of lumber on Wednesday from Green Thumb that will be used to build raised beds, and so we are happily assembling a team of volunteers who are interested in some fun construction. Once the beds are constructed and the soil and compost delivered, the seedlings can finally emerge from their greenhouse home and into the ground in which they belong!

Until then,
Margaret

Ribbon Cutting

Today we celebrated the opening of the garden with a very successful ribbon cutting. The morning started with heavy rain, but cleared just in time for the ceremony. We had a great turnout that included community members, elected officials, clergy, family and friends. It was great to look around and see so many people who are invested in the project. The ceremony marked an exciting beginning but also made me reflect on the past months leading up to the big event. I've gotten the chance to meet so many amazing and passionate people. I am very lucky and am looking forward to what the future holds for the Roots of Peace Community Garden.

More exciting news....Wednesday June 15th, we will have our first guest lecture hosted by Just Food on gardening for the three seasons in NYC. The free event kicks off at 11:00am. Refreshments will be served. New York 1 will be covering the event so it would be great to get a good turnout!

-Merry

Days 2 + 3

The past two days have been just as busy as the first! We're getting to know and love our garden space through weeding, raking, and other prep work. Yesterday, we started to plan for a recycled rain water collection system that will be placed in the garden to allow a close, renewable source of clean water to give to thirsty plants. We're also looking into building a compost bin to make good use of our extra weeds, sticks, table scraps, and garden leftovers, to provide an all-natural fertilizer for the garden.
It looks like our first flowers will be transplanted from our greenhouse in New Jersey to the garden on Friday, just in time for the Ribbon Cutting Ceremony on Saturday. In the mean time, we're hoping to begin building raised beds next week, so let's hope this heat wave cools down a bit!

Hope to see you on Saturday,
Margaret

Day 1

First day in the garden.

Margaret and I got an earlier start this morning in the garden. After admiring our newly painted fence we cleared some debris, measured for raised beds and got to work on weeding. I never thought weeding could be so satisfying, but its nice to see your efforts have an immediate and visible effect. Definitely more weeding to go though!

I hope that we can acquire a few more volunteers as the week goes on and the ribbon cutting ceremony gets closer. The more the merrier!

-Merry

Opening Day!

Hello All!

The Roots of Peace Community Garden is opening for construction this Monday, June 6th! We will be open from 9:00 am- 1:00 pm on Mondays and Wednesdays then from 4:00pm-7:30 pm on Fridays. If you have a group that would like to help out in the garden at another time please contact Meredith Byrne at mbyrne1@conncoll.edu. We are more than happy to accommodated your requests.

A special thanks to the great volunteers from Morgan Stanley that came into the garden this past Saturday, June 4th. Our fence is now graffiti free thanks to their hard work.

This week will be filled mostly with prep work including weeding, general layout, unloading supplies and getting ready for our upcoming ribbon ceremony.

The ribbon cutting will be taking place Saturday, June 11th at noon. I hope that you can all make it and celebrate the beginning of a productive season.

Conn Coll Recognized the Roots of Peace Community Garden!

Connecticut College is featuring a story on Garden Coordinator Merry Byrne this week. Check it out: http://www.conncoll.edu/news/7059.cfm

Minutes From Group Meeting 4/27

Thank you to all that joined us for our first group meeting on April 27th, 2011. Our next meeting will be THIS THURSDAY, May 5th at 7:30. We will be meeting at the New Americans YMCA Welcome Center at the Vanderbilt Morivian Church on Vanderbilt Avenue near Osgood Avenue. Please join us!

In other news the Roots of Peace Community Garden will be hosting its first workday on May 15th! We will be putting a fence around the property on 22 Waverly place and make a sign for our garden. More information to come, all are welcome.

Minutes from 4/27 Roots of Peace Community Garden:

1) Fencing

a. Goal is to have the fence up on May 15^th

b. Volunteers:

i. Have Wagner students and other youth groups help paint the privately owned fence that is graffitied

2) Participants: Start plot distribution

a. Thirty 4’x6’ Plots

b. Outreach to schools and youth programs

i. Osgood Daycare

ii. African Refuge Youth Program

iii. PS 57

iv. Port Richmond

c. 5 Plots to Van Duzer Civic

d. Realfood Project

i. Help translating participation letters

3) Educational Components

a. Guest Lectures

i. Project Hospitality hosting a guest lecture

4) PR

a. Distribute Fliers to partnering organizations for distribution

i. Healthfirst development of logo/PR materials

b. What is the best way to reach the Parkhill community?

5) Next Meeting 4/5/2011

a. Spot closer to community-TBA

Membership Agreement

Membership Agreement Form

Plot Rental Agreement

Garden Plots measure 4’x6’. Plots will be assigned on a first come first serve basis. Individual need will also be considered. A waiting list will be kept if participants feel that they can no longer maintain their plots or abide by the membership agreement. Members on the waiting list may still volunteer and garden in communal plots as they wish.

Roots of Peace Community Garden Membership Agreement:

I will respect the space of my fellow gardeners

I will tend to my garden and make it as productive as possible

I will participate in clean up days

I will attend workdays, group meetings and lectures regularly

I will take full responsibility for any guests I bring into the garden

I will assume any and all risk associated with using the garden

I will address any issues or concerns I have in an orderly and respectful manner

I will consult the garden staff first if I wish to bring in outside seeds and plants

Members are expected to work to keep the garden a happy, secure and enjoyable place where all participants can garden and socialize peacefully in a neighborly manner

I have read the above statements and agree to support and abide by them:

_______________________________ ____________________________

Signature Date

As spring starts the Roots of Peace Community Garden is preparing for the busy season ahead. After learning that our project was chosen by the Kathryn Davis 100 Projects for Peace, we briefly celebrated then were off to form new partnerships and take more definitive steps in creating the garden. We now have several dozen donated seed packets waiting to be seeded in April and pots waiting for them. It is so exciting to watch how the project is taking shape through the organizations we have made contact with and the people we have met along the way. We are still looking for interested participants so fill out those participation forms and get back to me with any questions!

-Merry

EXCITING NEWS! A list of our supporters!

Hi, everyone! We are so excited and grateful to announce the full (as of today) list of our supporters. Look them up to see what they're all about!

JustFood


Empowerment Zone Inc


GreenThumb


The Kathyrn Davis Foundation


Green Guerillas


Healthfirst


Family & Friends

Donor Form

Donate to our project! Contact mbyrne1@conncoll.edu or mpickoff@gmail.com to find out more about how you can help our garden grow.

Donor Form:

Name:

Address:

Email:

*Pledge (This not limited to monetary sums):

 *Garden Supplies Needed: Work Gloves, Wheel barrel, shovels, hammers, saws, garden shears etc. 

Participation Form

Interested in gardening with us this summer? It's free! Fill out this participation form and email it to mbyrne1@conncoll.edu !

Roots of Peace Community Garden

In Partnership with Empowerment Zone Inc, JustFood, The Kathryn Davis Foundation, Health First and GreenThumb

Participation Form:

Name:

Address:

Email:

Phone:

Garden Experience:

The Parkhill Community Garden is pleased to announce its newest partnership with Healthfirst, a New York City based group that works to improve the health of undeserved populations.

In other news our proposed garden project was selected as a finalist for the Davis Peace Projects Grant! We are working on making revisions to our budget/proposal and will find out March 11, 2011 if our project is selected.

Garden Flyer

Prolonged Peace

Prolonged Peace:

The peace promoted through the establishment of the community garden will be sustained through the profit that the communal garden plot yield. One plot in the garden will be reserved for the organization; these yields will be sold at local farmers markets during the summer and also to local restaurants. The profits will be used to sustain the costs of the garden in coming years. After establishment the garden will also join the New York City Community Garden Coalition, where further fundraising and grants will be available to ensure the prolonged permanence of the garden.

Additional efforts to ensure the permanence of the garden will include a program certifying garden volunteers through the completion of attendance at two lecture series and a fulfillment of a set number of hours in the garden. The certification will allow them unrestricted access to the garden and grant them authority to train other less experienced community members in urban gardening. The main objectives of the certification program are to establish a greater sense of achievement among residence and increase involvement in the garden over a prolonged time period.

The permanence of the garden will provide residents with meaningful activities to aid their transition into the community. The garden will channel attention into progressive activities making it less likely that community members will become involved in harmful activities that fuel crime and violence, detracting from the peaceful balance that is necessary for resettled refugees to flourish.

---

[1] Hevesi, Alan G., Bleiwas, Kenneth B. “Staten Island: Economic Development and the State of the Borough Economy”. Office of the State Comptroller and NYC Public Information Office. March 2005, www.osc.state.ny.us

[2] Kim M, Van Wye G, Kerker B, Thorpe L, Frieden TR, The Health of Immigrants in New York City, p 17

Objectives

IV.                Objectives:

·         Providing Affordable, Healthy Food: Plots, seeds and supplies will be free as will whatever each person’s crop yields. The only cost will be the time and labor required to produce harvest.

·         Teaching Financial Management: In addition to providing food to the participants and their families, garden members will also have a chance to sell their produce at community events and local farmers markets. This will teach the fundamentals of wage earning, saving, marketing and income allocation.

·         Improving Nutrition: The mortality rate in Park hill is 25% higher than the greater New York area. The nutritional yields from the garden will not only instill healthier eating habits but also spark discussion on healthy life styles.

·         Enhancing Self-Esteem: Post traumatic stress is an unspoken but all too common problem among refugees leading to isolation, cyclical violence in the home, depression and even suicide. The horrors that Liberian refugees have experienced are life changing and not easily surmountable. The community garden will however, provide an opportunity for residents to connect to the familiarity of agriculture and bring their focus to the outside world fostering a new understanding of self worth and identity.

·         Providing Employment: The garden, through additional grants, will hire a garden supervisor to comprise the garden’s permanent staff of volunteers. The paid supervisor will serve as positive examples as to how enthusiasm and hard work make upward mobility possible, despite limited economic resources.  

·         Fostering Group Identity: Though Park hill is largely Liberian there are also a large number of Haitian, Nigerian and other West African refuges in addition to low income U.S. citizens. The garden will build the community as a whole, as it takes on individual meaning to those dealing with post traumatic stress or simply making ends meet. The garden will be a safe, serene place where members can create cross cultural links among diverse community members.

·         Educating Children: African Refuge hosts a well-established youth, after school and summer program. A plot will be reserved in the garden for the youth center with the intention of educating younger generations on healthy life styles and sustainable practices in hopes that they will learn skills necessary for self sufficiency later in life.

·         Encouraging Environmental Sustainability: Through a partnership with Just Food Inc. the garden project will host a series of guest lecturers to educate residence on green living and sustainable practices that can easily be implement in their daily lives for example using recycled soda bottles as pots for seeding.

Methods

The initiative to build a community garden will begin this March with an informational session in conjunction with African Refuge and Just Foods. Prior to the informational session, mailings about the garden initiative will be sent to the homes of African Refuge’s constituents and updates about the project will be included in newsletters in order to generate interest and support. At the March informational session pots and seeds will be given to participants so that they can begin seeding their crops in mid April. We will utilize a small greenhouse space donated by a family in Morris County New Jersey, to start seedlings.

The project will officially be launched in the second week of June, with a clean-up day. All those interested in securing a plot will have to donate an hour to clean-up. The clean-up day will focus on clearing the roof top space for construction and planting. The Saturday following the clean-up day (June 11^th) will feature a ribbon cutting day where local press and community members will meet to declare the garden space open for construction.

Work days will commence on Monday (June 14^th) after the ribbon cutting ceremony. Our first task will be moving supplies to the rooftop space. The next task will be constructing raised beds; this task will most likely take three work days consisting of three to five hours of work a piece. After the beds are constructed planting and transplanting can begin.

During work day lunch breaks on Wednesdays guest speakers will come in to talk about issues relating to environmental sustainability and community development. Community members have offered to speak about green employment, what it means to be a refugee today, health conscious cooking, finance and environmental current events. The goal of these discussions will be to create an environment that is secure, peaceful and conducive to informed discussion.

Project Proposal

II.                  Proposal:

In order to empower the community and add to the growing success of resettled Liberian refugees we wish to establish a community garden that will create a source of nutrition, a sense of self-reliance and a small income stream for the members of Park Hill’s refugee and low income community. The garden will be placed on the rooftop of the 185 Park Hill apartment complex, home to the African Refuge Community Center. Permission to use the space has already been granted by landlord, Dr. Darshan Shah. The initiative will be community led, drawing from local volunteers for help with construction, agricultural advisement and creative design. Members of the community have already expressed an interest in participating in the project, and Executive Director of local nonprofit African Refuge has offered expertise from his Liberian agricultural background.

The garden will also provide for discussion on agriculture and nutrition. In order to foster such discussion we have set up a designated time slot during work days dedicated to guest lecture. The organization Just Food, a New York based nonprofit aimed at educating city dwellers on agriculture, will come in to present at a preliminary informational session in late march. Other lectures will not only draw on outside resources but also draw on the expertise of the community which heralds a strong agricultural legacy.

Background Information on U.S.- Liberia Relations

I.                    Background of U.S. Liberian Relations

Liberia and the United States have a long and aid-dependent relationship. Liberia has gone through perpetual cycles of bankruptcy and instability stemming from their financial dependence on the international community, the oppressive reign of Charles Taylor, two civil wars, ethnic warfare and bloody coupes. During the first civil war many Liberian refugees fled to the United States. Since then renewed conflict has created a prolonged refugee situation in which refugees are living under emergency conditions for prolonged periods of time as stateless persons. The idleness that these conditions promote, both in urban centers and refugee camps, lend themselves to economic hardship, crime, drug use, depression and resentment.

Park Hill Staten Island, home to the largest Liberian population outside West Africa, still sees many resettled Liberian Refugees living on the periphery of US society, waiting idly for a cue from the international community as to their status. This has created a breeding ground for crime, drug use and economic instability for families and community members in Park Hill. The poverty rate is the highest in the borough at 21% and the Bloods, Crips and Latin Kings have active chapters in surrounding areas[1]. The community as a whole struggles with health and nutritional issues. Most residents lack health care and do not regularly see doctors which has resulted in the 25% higher mortality rate in Park Hill as compared with the greater New York area[2].  Peace for this population lies not only in the absence of conflict but in the security of good health and a sense of self worth.

Introduction

Peace is a perfect balance, a combination of all the necessary and positive stimuli that foster growth and development. A plant demonstrates the simplicity of this balance. If a plant can lay its roots in soil that contains all necessary elements for life it will grow and help sustain the human race. We as humans are more closely related to plants than the food chain presents. Like plants, humans require a perfect balance of elements if they are to grow and develop; the most basic of which are safety, food and water. Drought, political instability, economic downturn and ethnic tension have made this perfect balance a more foreign and unattainable concept for the majority of the world’s population.