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.