EAST NEW YORK FARMS! Retrospective Case Study Case study prepared by Sarita Daftary-‐Steel, former East New York Farms! Project Director, United Community Centers; and Suzanne Gervais, Ph. D Nutrition, Sr. Extension Associate, Division of Nutritional Sciences, Cornell University as part of the Food Dignity Project. Food Dignity is supported by Agriculture and Food Research Initiative Competitive Grant no. 2011-‐68004-‐30074 from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture. Background information provided by: Aley Schoonmaker Kent, Ana Aguirre, Georgine Yorgey, John Ameroso, Perry Winston, Salima Jones-‐Daley
This document is designed to provide an easily portable and searchable version of the original case study, which is available here as an enhanced online presentation. Content of this case study includes: A) Context B) Our story a. 1995-‐1999: Getting started b. 2000-‐2003: Getting established c. 2004-‐2006: Getting structured d. 2007-‐2009: Getting bigger e. 2010-‐2011: Getting stronger C) Analysis
CONTEXT
Late 1800s, Early 1900s East New York was one of the last parts of New York City that had production-‐oriented farms. The town of New Lots (which now forms the central area of East New York) was one of the major vegetable producing areas for the entire city of New York.i 1940s-‐1970s People of color, mostly Black and Puerto Rican, started to move to East New York in significant numbers. At the time, East New York was a primarily white immigrant (Jewish, Italian, German) community. This set off a period of "white flight" in the 1960s and 1970s, during which white residents fled to other areas, including the newly-‐ developed suburbs in Long Island. These
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developments generally excluded non-‐white residents. In 1960, East New York was approximately 80% white, and by 1967, white residents were less than 20% of the population.ii
Article segments from "The Levittown Legacy: Segregation in Suburbia?" by Kyle Sabo
1960s-‐1980s Though Black and Latino families moved in, it was not enough to replace all of the residents who left. With so many homes and buildings vacant, properties values plummeted. More homeowners and landlords rushed to sell, and arson became a serious problem, much of it by landlords who hoped to collect insurance money from their buildings.iii East New York suffered substantial neglect from city agencies, and saw a decline in the quality of public services like libraries, schools, transportation, and fire services. This strategy was called "planned shrinkage" and was employed by New York City's Housing Commissioner Roger Starr who envisioned cutting public services in areas that had already lost significant population, thereby encouraging the remaining residents to move, and then discontinuing services to these areas all together and reducing the City's costs. Vacant properties and vacant lots where buildings were demolished or burned down became a magnet for drugs and violent crime.
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From "A Synergism of Plagues: "Planned Shrinkage," Contagious Housing Destruction, and AIDS in the Bronx," Rodrick Wallace, January 1988
“The Dead Zone," shot from Snediker Avenue looking northeast towards Hinsdale Avenue, Spring 1990. Photo by Perry Winston
1960s -‐ 1980s -‐ Community gardening in NYC These policies and ones like them led to huge amounts of vacant lots in many cities nationwide. In 1973, Green Guerillas was founded in NYC with a mission to reclaim vacant lots and create gardens to revitalize communities. 1977 marked the start of the USDA funded Urban Gardening Program through Cooperative Extension Service (in New York City, through Cornell Cooperative Extension). In 1978, NYC's GreenThumb Program started to offer leases to gardens that were formerly "squatters," and was expanded in 1979 by a Community Development Block Grant from the US Department of Housing and Urban Development. This enabled GreenThumb to offer gardeners not just leases but also some basic supplies and training.
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Photo by John Ameroso
1990s A significant amount of housing was redeveloped in East NY through several programs, the largest of which was the Nehemiah Housing program through East Brooklyn Congregations.
Block party on Schenck Avenue, with new Phase I Nehemiah Homes (left) and older row houses (right). Photo by Eliza Butler
Violent crime remained a problem, as East New York suffered the highest murder rate in New York City.
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Still, a recovery had begun by the early 1990s, and it was during this time that the Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development applied for a grant through the US Department of Housing and Urban Development's Community Outreach Partnerships Center. They proposed to do community based planning in five NYC communities, including East New York.
OUR STORY 1995-‐1999: Getting started
Working with a large network of community-‐based organizations, a team from Pratt led by Perry Winston organized community forums to ask residents "What works in East NY? What doesn't work?" and "What do you want to see in 10-‐15 years?" This assets-‐based approach set the tone for the programs that developed and become a core value of the East New York Farms! Project. Perry Winston noted that at the time, the Pratt Center for Community and Environmental Development "existed so separately from Pratt Institute for so long. It had its own funding, and made for a much more equal partnership than dealing with a tiny Office of Community Relations at university that might have one staff person. It was more like a non-‐profit dealing with another non-‐profit."
From "Issues and Opportunities in East New York: A Report on the Envisioning Forums and Development in East New York"
These responses, coupled with Pratt's mapping technology, highlighted the abundance of community gardens on formerly vacant land in East New York, more than any other neighborhood in New York City.
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These gardens were largely on city-‐owned vacant land and registered through the Green Thumb program. A large population of young people, and their potential to be involved, was also cited as an asset.
GIS map of gardens in East New York
Perry Winston, from U rban Omnibus interview
Soon after, Perry Winston from Pratt met John Ameroso of Cornell University Cooperative Extension at a presentation where John emphasized potential income per square foot from urban agriculture. A core group of organizations -‐ the East New York Planning Group -‐ continued meeting with the idea of further developing these resources -‐ gardens, gardeners, and youth -‐ to meet East New York's need for income generating opportunities, fresh food and services to address health problems, safe public spaces, and educational programs for youth. The East New York Planning Group (ENYPG) consisted of: -‐ Pratt Institute for Center for Community and Environmental Development (Pratt) -‐ Experience in urban planning, staff specifically dedicated to fundraising with knowledge of large funding programs. -‐ Local Development Corporation of East New York (LDCENY)-‐ Expertise in supporting entrepreneurs to develop their businesses, and permission to use a city-‐owned vacant lot on New Lots Avenue and Barbey Street. -‐ United Community Centers (UCC) -‐ Community organizing and youth development experience. UCC's office was also adjacent to a 1/2 acre vacant lot. -‐ Cornell University Cooperative Extension (Cornell) -‐ Experience working with groups on urban agriculture projects citywide. -‐ Genesis Homes/Help USA -‐ Experience working with vulnerable youth and families -‐ East New York Urban Youth Corps -‐ History of youth programming and working with gardens through their Success Gardens program, mostly for beautification, not specifically food production -‐ Green Guerillas -‐ Experience in grassroots organizing with gardeners and gardens citywide, and using gardens as a way to revitalize communities and reclaim vacant land.
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(L) Vacant lot on New Lots Avenue between Barbey and Jerome Streets that would house the market. (R) John Ameroso talking with a graduate student in front UCC Youth Farm in early stages of development
These core partners continued meeting after the community forums, interested in the idea of a program that would help gardens increase production, offer employment for youth, and create a vendors market for urban growers and other local entrepreneurs. An important question at the time was of course how they would fund this. In 1997, an associate at Pratt saw a Request for Proposals from the Hitachi Foundation for "Resource Use in Community Development." The Giuliani administration had just announced its plans to auction off all under-‐utilized city-‐owned land -‐ including community gardens. The East New York Planning Group seized on this opportunity to argue that community gardens were resources at-‐risk, and that by helping gardens grow more food and educate young people, they would be seen as more valuable. Pratt staff wrote the majority of the grant, with input from other partners. And the East New York Planning Group got the grant. Among 10 grantees, theirs was the only urban project. $250,000 over two years was granted to LDCENY and divided fairly evenly among the seven planning group partners, who were then tasked with actually starting a program.
(L) Green Gems Garden on Glenmore Ave. Photo by John Ameroso. (R) From report "Resource Use in Community Development," by the Hitachi Foundation, July 2003
The grant was received in April 1998, but actually doing something took some time. By Fall 1998, eager to show some concrete progress, the group decided to hold the first market on the sidewalk at New Lots Avenue and Bradford Street. Johanna Willins, who had recently taken over an abandoned garden to convert it into the Herbal Garden of East New York, sold her produce along with John Ameroso of Cornell, who sold produce from a Cornell site in Staten Island (Gericke Farm). David Crutchfield of ENY Urban Youth Corps assisted, acting as a market manager.
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Johanna and John set up the market one more time that year.
First East New York Farmers Market, Fall 1998. Photo by John Ameroso.
The next year (1999) Johanna and John remained the only consistent vendors, selling at first on the sidewalk in front of what is now the UCC Youth Farm (then a mostly undeveloped vacant lot). Aley Schoonmaker Kent, an intern through Cornell, spent the summer assisting Johanna in her garden and trying to recruit other gardeners. Aley and John regularly made 5:00am trips the Bronx Terminal Market on Saturdays to buy produce to resell in order to bolster supply at the market. The youth program, organized by ENY Urban Youth Corps, involved youth assigned in groups of two to work with a specific gardener on a regular basis. By the fall, LDCENY officially obtained permission to use the lot at New Lots Avenue between Barbey and Jerome Streets for a vendors market, though it was filled with rubble and construction debris. To obtain permission, they needed to emphasize a "vendors market" never mentioning gardens, as the local Councilwoman at the time did not support gardens.
East New York Farmers Market in late 1999, on New Lots Avenue between Barbey and Jerome Streets. Photo by John Ameroso.
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Looking back on successes and challenges from the year, the East New York Planning Group decided to restructure the remaining Hitachi funds to hire a full-‐time staff member to coordinate a more structured youth program and to do more work with gardeners. By this time, Green Guerillas had left the collaboration to focus their city-‐wide work to fight the loss of gardens to private developers. ENY Urban Youth Corps had been cut out of the partnership because their main staff member engaged in the project was not consistently participating. Former Cornell intern Aley was offered this new full-‐time Urban Agriculture Coordinator position. The position was based at UCC, because UCC was close to the market site, had experience with youth programs, owned a van for bringing youth interns to gardens, and because of the Aley Schoonmaker Kent and Johanna Willins at the market opportunity to invest more time in further developing the garden in the 1/2 acre lot next to UCC.
(L) Clearing the lot next to UCC with volunteers from the neighborhood. (R) Teens from UCC's programs spreading wood chips in the lot that would later become the UCC Youth Farm.
2000-‐2003: Getting Established
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UCC -‐ Hosted an Urban Agriculture Coordinator, a full-‐time staff member tasked with organizing a youth program to assist gardeners and to develop the vacant lot next to UCC into a productive urban farm, and with recruiting gardeners to participate in the market
LDCENY -‐ Hosted a part-‐time Market Manager, responsible for market day operations, recruitment of vendors who were not gardeners, and market outreach -‐ Negotiated with City agencies to operate a market on the vacant lot on New Lots Avenue -‐ LDC Deputy Director served as the Project Director for East New York Farms!, working 25% time -‐ Referred entrepreneurs to the farmers market as part of their ongoing small business development work
Genesis Homes/ HELP USA -‐ Recruited youth for the internship program at UC -‐ Initially staff were very engaged, even making trips to the Bronx Terminal Market to buy produce. But as the main Genesis Homes staff liaison became increasingly involved with a local Assemblywoman who had interests in seeing other development happen where the market was operating, their role faded.
Pratt -‐ Provided a link to urban planning resources like mapping technology, drawing up site plans for gardens and a proposed permanent market site
East New York Farms! Roles of ENYPG partners as of 2000
-‐ Informally took on roles of facilitation of the overall collaboration, and identifying and writing several grants
Cornell -‐ Provided technical expertise in market-‐orientated sustainable food production, through conducting workshops and individual site visits with gardeners -‐ Provided a summer intern to assist the Urban Agriculture Coordinator at UCC -‐ Was very active in the market -‐ both selling produce from Gericke Farm and making trips to the Bronx Terminal Market to bolster supply of produce at the market
Support from the New York Foundation, the Merck Family Fund, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, and a 3-‐year grant from the US Department of Agriculture Community Food Projects grant program sustained East New York Farms! (ENYF) in the years after the Hitachi Foundation funding ended. Pratt and LDCENY did most of the grant writing, with LDCENY serving as the fiscal conduit.
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With 20 interns engaged in a more structured youth program, ENYF was able to offer more structured help to gardeners, in exchange for a hand-‐shake agreement that they would sell at the market at least three times in a year. The youth interns also advanced the process of turning the 1/2 acre next to UCC into a productive garden. Since 1995 staff at UCC and volunteers from the neighborhood had been working on cleaning up the lot, on their lunch breaks and on weekends. With staff specifically dedicated to Cornell intern Jonah Braverman with youth interns this project, the development of the garden sped up rapidly. In 2000, the market experienced significant growth. Tracking him down at a conference organized by Just Food, Aley managed to recruit Mike Rogowski to join as a vendor, which vastly increased supply and variety at the market. The same year, LDCENY succeeded in lobbying the city to clear and re-‐pave the market site and fix the surrounding sidewalks. Midway through this market season, after a year of lobbying from the ENYPG, the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets began distributing Farmers Market Nutrition Program (FMNP) coupons through Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) Centers in East New York -‐ they did not previously distribute coupons here because there was no farmers market.
(L) Mike Rogowski with staff at the market. (R) East New York Gardeners Association members selling at the market.
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Johanna Willins, Adell Oliver, Leila Jamison, Eliza Butler, and the UCC Youth Farm became the first urban growers certified to accept FMNP in New York State. These women, many of them members of the East NY Gardeners Association, formed the committed group who showed other community members that the market was there to stay. In 2001, vegetable farmer Alex Kravets joined as a vendor, bringing more variety and volume to market. Aley and John could finally stop making early morning trips to the Bronx to buy produce to resell. The same year, distribution of Senior FMNP coupons began in East New York, in addition to WIC FMNP, and had a major impact. Customers began lining up outside the gate before the market opened, and sales increased 400% over 2000. Aley descirbed this as the first year it felt like a "real market.”
Customers waiting to enter the market, 2001
2002 brought new opportunities and transitions. Aley left UCC to take a position at Heifer International, and Georgine Yorgey was hired to replace her as Urban Agriculture Coordinator. Before transitioning, Aley had hosted visits from Heifer staff, who came from Chicago to tour urban agriculture projects in NYC. The Market Manager, based at LDCENY, George Clark, was replaced by Salima Jones-‐Daley, who interned at LDCENY in early 2002 and worked with Just Food and Mike Rogowski to establish a Community Georgine Yorgey with intern Verniccia Ford Supported Agriculture (CSA) program. In summer 2002, ENYF established a partnership with Just Food to host an Americorps VISTA to organize and expand the CSA. The position was initially based at LDCENY. By 2003, when the first VISTA finished her term and a second VISTA (Sarita Daftary) was placed, this position had been switched to UCC to provide some much needed help with the UCC Youth Farm.
(L) Market Manager Salima Jones-‐Daley with her husband Nate. (R) VISTA Sarita Daftary with a CSA member
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2004-‐2006: Getting Structured After about a year of planning meetings with ENYF staff & gardeners and Heifer staff, in 2004 we entered into an official partnership with Heifer International. This was the first significant source of funds for the project that went through UCC, not LDCENY, and Georgine was the main contact on this grant. A unique aspect of this funding was the degree of capacity building support that Heifer offered. A committee of gardeners decided to use Heifer funding to create the Backyard Exchange revolving loan fund, one of ENYF's first structured programs for gardeners that existed separately from the youth program. This innovative adaptation of Heifer's "Passing on the Gift" requirement helped pave the way for similar set ups in other Heifer-‐funded projects. Heifer funding also made us part of the Heifer Project Partners network, through which we attended yearly meetings with peer groups in our region. Georgine described this as giving us a chance to learn from other groups, "take ourselves seriously, and realize what we know." Heifer staff also helped us implement a participatory evaluation and planning process with members at the end of each year -‐ a process we tweaked but maintained many years past the end of our Heifer partnership. Georgine initiated some key changes to bring more structure to the youth program and gardener support. Drawing from the model established by The Food Project in Boston, we created a stronger ladder of responsibility for youth by adding "returning intern" positions, establishing more clear evaluation structure in which youth could lose and earn back portions of their stipend based on performance, and adding content and structure to our curriculum. We also established a "Share Table" for gardeners, where they could drop off produce to be sold by our youth program. Proceeds were then shared between the gardeners and the youth program. This change made it possible for any gardener to participate in selling at the market in some way, even if they only had a small amount of produce, or could not stay at the market to sell.
During this time, the ENYPG was going through serious structural growing pains. With some large grants coming to an end, particularly the USDA Community Food Projects grant, the group was running out of money to pay salaries for core staff, including Georgine. The full-‐time VISTA position at UCC, which had by then become integral to running the youth program, was ending as well.
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Looking at these prospects, Georgine and Sarita started to write grant proposals, seeking to fund two full-‐ time positions at UCC. We started by looking at who funded peer organizations, and attending some trainings at the Foundation Center. The funders who approved our requests were mostly private foundations based on New York (including the Independence Community Foundation, Jessie Smith Noyes Foundation, and Lily Auchincloss Foundation). This was the first time UCC had taken such a significant role in fundraising. By 2005, UCC staff were concerned that there was a lack of accountability within the ENYF partnership, with two main concerns, a) that LDCENY was not delivering on its commitments as the lead organization and host of the Project Director, and b) that LDCENY's Executive Director rarely attended ENYPG meetings, but did not fully delegate decision-‐making on ENYF matters to the LDCENY staff who did attend meetings. Feeling like the collaboration was at a crisis point, Georgine asked Alison Cohen of Heifer International to facilitate a meeting with all of the ENYF partners. When LDCENY's Executive Director indicated in this meeting that she perceived LDCENY to be in charge of long-‐term planning and strategy, and UCC to be responsible for carrying out the work, UCC worried that the partnership could not be saved. Two staffing changes in 2005 shifted the roles of project partners. Ojeda Hall-‐Phillips, Deputy Director of LDCENY, who had also served as the ENYF Project Director since 1999, left LDCENY. Lacking funds to pay for time spent on ENYF, LDCENY did not assign anyone to this role after Ojeda left, and the role functionally shifted to Georgine at UCC, who had already begun fundraising and managing finances in addition to her previous responsibilities. Salima Jones-‐Daley, the Market Manager on staff at LDCENY, took maternity leave in November. Georgine -‐ rather than an LDCENY staff member -‐ took over end of season market tasks. This highlighted the degree to which UCC had become the organization ultimately responsible for and committed to making sure the work of ENYF got done. Also in Fall 2005, the National Institutes of Health granted funding for a proposal developed in partnership between Mount Sinai Medical Center and the ENYPG, with LDCENY as a subcontractor. The grant would fund the development of a food cooperative in East New York, an idea conceived at a neighborhood food summit organized by ENYF in 2004. When Salima returned from maternity leave, she shifted to working on the new food cooperative, and a
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new part-‐time Market Manager was hired -‐ ENYF youth program alumna and former UCC Day Care Center student Tanya Mercado. Because there were no other staff at LDCENY doing consistent work on ENYF, and because the funds to pay her came through grants received by UCC, Tanya was based at UCC. However she was technically an employee of the LDCENY, at the insistence of their Executive Director. Another significant staffing change came in Fall 2005 when Georgine Yorgey, planning a move to Seattle, announced her departure. We hired Jonah Braverman as Urban Agriculture Coordinator in February 2006. Jonah had interned with ENYF for a few summers, placed through John Ameroso at Cornell. Georgine left in March 2006 and Sarita became the Project Director. (R) UCC’s Executive Director Ana Aguirre with Tanya Mercado.
ENYF faced a huge setback in April 2006 when the shipping container in which we stored all of our market supplies was removed and compacted by the NYC Department of Sanitation, in preparation for development of housing on the lot at New Lots and Barbey Streets. The Executive Director of LDCENY said she received a letter from the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) saying that the lot would be cleared and that she shared this with the ENYPG members, but no one, including LDCENY staff members, remembered receiving this information. UCC took on the primary responsibility for raising the nearly $10,000 required to replace all of the supplies. This incident dealt a deep blow to the relationship between UCC and LDCENY, who were the main "on the ground partners," with Prattand Cornell acting more as advisers. However the partnership continued, and the LDCENY negotiated with the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD) for the farmers market to be able to continue to operate in the lot at New Lots and Barbey through November 2006, as construction would not start until that winter. Later in 2006, HPD approved LDCENY's proposal to develop affordable housing on this site, with a plan to include ground floor retail space for a food cooperative and a plaza for the farmers market. Despite these challenges, ENYF continued to grow. The market experienced some setbacks in 2005 when we lost our regular fruit vendor, Toigo Orchards, (due to labor issues as they described it), and the release of Senior FMNP coupons was delayed until late summer. But a feature in the Daily News and the participation of Red Jacket Orchards helped sales recover and exceed 2004 sales. With all new equipment, 2006 was a great year for the market. A new fish vendor, Nick Manzione, added to the diversity of products, and we entered into our first full season accepting Food Stamps/EBT as part of a pilot program of the Farmers Market Federation of NY and the NY State Department of Agriculture & Markets.
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(L) Customers shopping for fish. (R) Marlene Wilks, Pauline Reid, and Denniston Wilks with their produce.
Sales of urban grown produce increased substantially from 2004 -‐ 2006, both because of more gardeners participating, and because of the increasingly consistent participation of Marlene & Denniston Wilks, and Marlene's sister Pauline Reid. With growing experience in Jamaica, they added significantly to the volume and variety at the market, introducing Caribbean specialty crops that were hard to find elsewhere. They were already looking for more growing space by 2006 when the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development, with the progressive leadership of Holly Leicht and Jessica Wurwarg, approached us about converting a 1/2 acre plot of vacant land at New Lots and Georgia Avenues into an urban farm. During this time, the youth program was also constantly evolving, as we were enhancing curriculum, developing the UCC Youth Farm, and more frequently engaging in national networks of youth food justice organizations like Rooted in Community and the Food Project's BLAST network.
(L) ENYF youth interns and staff with other members of the Food Project's BLAST network at the 2005 Community Food Security Coalition Conference in Atlanta. (R) View of UCC Youth Farm
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UCC -‐ Hosted an Urban Agriculture Coordinator, a full-‐time staff member tasked with managing the UCC Youth Farm, providing training and assistance to gardeners, and assisting with the youth program -‐ Hosted a part-‐time Market Manager, responsible for market day operations, recruitment of vendors, and market outreach -‐ Hosted a full-‐time Project Director & Youth Program Director, raising and managing funds, leading development and implementation of the youth program, and supporting the Urban Agriculture Coordinator and Market Manager
LDCENY -‐ Referred entrepreneurs to the farmers market as part of their ongoing small business development work -‐ Secured permission from the City for the vacant lot at New Lots and Barbey to be used for a market -‐ Led development of the East New York Food Cooperative, a project of the ENYPG related to but separate from ENYF
Pratt -‐ Served as an adviser on urban planning issues as needed, and provided a link to resources like mapping technology
East New York Farms! Roles of ENYPG partners by the end of 2006
-‐ Remained the informal convener of the ENYPG, scheduling and taking notes at meetings
Cornell -‐ Provided technical expertise
Genesis Homes/ HELP USA No longer involved -‐ attended no meetings after 2003
in market-‐orientated sustainable food production, primarily through conducting a series of workshops with gardeners, and assisting with larger projects at UCC Youth Farm, like installation of a hoop house -‐ Occasionally participated in the market by dropping off produce from Gericke Farm for UCC youth interns to sell
2007-‐2009: Getting bigger After approaching us in 2006, in April 2007 the NYC Department of Housing Preservation and Development officially transferred a 1/2 acre lot at New Lots & Georgia Avenues to the NYC Department of Parks and Recreation's Green Thumb program, and licensed UCC to use the lot to create an urban farm with local residents. To maximize ownership by local residents, we decided to use only a portion of the space to farm with our staff and youth program, and to engage a group of community residents to farm the rest of the space. Members chose the name Hands & Heart Garden.
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(L) Hands & Heart Garden before development. (R) Gardeners marking out beds
Having by then developed expertise in youth leadership development, this move engaged us in more intensively supporting adult leadership, particularly in helping the members develop a structure, by-‐laws, and a board. We quickly realized that we had a lot to learn in this area. Over the next few years, Hands & Heart grew into a productive garden, and also experienced significant struggles, including conflicts between members, issues of sharing space and power, and the skepticism bred from lifetimes of witnessing and experiencing discrimination, corruption, and deception. Some new sources of funding -‐ a USDA Community Food Projects grant, a grant from the Project for Public Spaces (through the W.K. Kellogg Foundation), and a grant from the J.M. Kaplan Fund -‐ enabled us to hire two new part-‐time staff. We hired a Farm Manager (David Vigil) to manage the UCC Youth Farm and allow the Urban Agriculture Coordinator to spend more time working with gardeners given the addition of Hands & Heart Garden. This also expanded our capacity to host tours and volunteer groups. We also hired a Development Associate (Jessica Dias) to assist with fundraising. By mid 2007, after years of dwindling participation, LDCENY's role in ENYF ended, and ENYF officially became a program of UCC. With Perry Winston's departure from Pratt the same year, meetings of the East NY Planning Group also ended. The expansion of ENYF, at the same time that funding for other UCC programs was shrinking, initially posed some challenges. In 2003, there was one person at UCC working on ENYF, and by 2007, there were five (2 full-‐ time, 3 part-‐time) in a fairly small office. Because of its origins as a partnership project, not a program solely of UCC, ENYF was often seen as fairly independent by community members, media, and sometimes funders. It took some time for ENYF to find its place as a program of UCC With construction of affordable housing underway on the lot at New Lots & Barbey where the market operated from 2000-‐2006, we secured a permit to block off Schenck Avenue between New Lots and Livonia Aves on Saturdays from June -‐ November, even though we had been told that closings for consecutive Saturdays were very hard to secure. With this in mind, we filed our permit early, obtained letters of support from gardeners, vendors, youth interns, and customers, and sought help from partner organizations, like Grow NYC, that had strong connections with the Mayor's Office.
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The market thrived in this new location! Because we were adjacent to the UCC Youth Farm, we could utilize this space for farm tours, volunteer events, and children's activities on market days. The more open set up (compared to our previous spot inside a fenced-‐in lot) made the market feel more like a street fair. And we bought a sound system, which turned out to be a great investment. With good food and good music, right next to our own urban farm, a public library, a park, East New Farmers Market, summer 2007. Photo by Ethan Kent. two daycare centers, the subway and three bus lines, the market on Saturdays felt like the kind of quality of life we wanted to create for East New York. Market income in 2007 was 19% higher than 2006, with a big jump in sales from urban gardeners, largely thanks to increased growing space at Hands & Heart garden, and total sales exceeded $100K for the first time. In 2008, we opened a second, smaller market on Wednesday afternoons at Hands & Heart Garden. Customers had been requesting a weekday market for years, but it was not until 2008 that we had sufficient staff and production to start one.
(L) Intern Steve Saylee and gardener Jeanette Ware at the Wednesday market stand. (R) Youth interns practice talking points on compost
We continued to tweak and refine the youth program -‐ enhancing curriculum for all youth and for "returning interns" in particular by expanding their leadership roles and training. With some new funders like the Levitt Foundation, we were also able to expand the program from 20 to 24 internships. In 2009 we stopped calling our monthly meetings "Market Meetings" and started calling them "General Meetings" recognizing that not all of the people who wanted to be involved in ENYF participated heavily in the market, and that meetings focused on market operations and planning were better held on market days when our upstate farmers could participate. With our core programs running fairly smoothly, we could begin to invest more in engaging the
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energy of many different East New Yorkers who were interested in using food to create a healthier community. Around the same time we also started referring to the people who participated actively in ENYF as members, primarily because the terms "youth, gardeners, and vendors" no longer covered all of the ways that people were involved. Partnerships & Networks As urban agriculture gained exponential popularity, and issues of food and health were increasingly recognized in the media, opportunities for partnerships and being involved in networks seemed to crop up everywhere. Some started and fizzled, others lasted longer. We needed to start choosing partnerships and networks carefully, and to more sharply define who we were -‐ choosing, for example, not to sell any substantial amounts of our produce to high-‐end customers (restaurants, events, etc) outside of our community, because our focus was on access for East New York, where there was still great unmet need and demand for fresh, affordable produce. We also opted out of a lot of city-‐wide network meetings and tabling events, to focus our limited time on doing deeper outreach within our community, reminding ourselves that our mission -‐ and expertise -‐ was not primarily to promote sustainable agriculture as a concept citywide or nationwide, but to make sure that quality of life was improved in East New York through community engagement in urban agriculture. Example: Brooklyn's Bounty One interesting example was a partnership among community-‐based markets linked with urban farms in Brooklyn called "Brooklyn's Bounty," that lasted a couple of years, but ultimately dissolved. One problem was that each community partner was fundamentally local and rooted in their own community, and lacked the capacity to lead a borough-‐wide effort. Eventually, it also seemed that these peer organizations did not bring such different skill sets or resources for a long-‐standing structured partnership to make sense. After the formal partnership ended, former Brooklyn's Bounty partners continued to work together as needed in less structured and possibly more useful ways.
Example: New York City Community Gardens Coalition
In anticipation of the 2010 expiration of the legal settlement between New York State and New York City that temporarily preserved many gardens in 2002, we became more directly involved in the New York City Community Gardens Coalition. Being engaged with NYCCGC enabled us to stay updated on, and to influence, policies affecting community gardens.
ENYF interns at community gardens hearing
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ENYF experienced a few staffing changes from 2008 to 2009. After Tanya Mercado left her position in 2007 (after about 18 months in that role), we had 3 different part-‐ time Market Managers through 2009. Jonah Braverman left his position as Urban Agriculture Coordinator, and Deborah Greig took over this role. David Vigil's part-‐time position as Farm Manager expanded to full-‐ time, and our engagement of volunteers, schools, and after-‐school groups grew. We had to let our part-‐time Development Associate go when the funds raised could not meet the extra expense of having this position. Raising and managing all funds for the ENYF project went back to being the responsibility of the ENYF Project Director.
(L) Deborah Greig leads a workshop for gardeners. (R) David Vigil leads Via Campesina delegate and WHY Hunger staff on a farm tour
Eventually, ENYF started to receive wider recognition. In 2008, we received a Harry Chapin Self-‐Reliance Award from WHY Hunger, and a Samuel Peabody Award for Community Activism from the Citizens Committee for the Children of New York City. We were also featured in the NY Times and on PBS' Bill Moyer's Journal.
(L) Marlene Wilks and Sarita Daftary with WHY Hunger ED Bill Ayres (R) Ana Aguirre and Sarita Daftary with youth interns Joemi Regalado, Louis Rivera, Sharnay Procope, Shuaibu Kenchi, and gardener Joyce Dixon at CCCNY Award Ceremony
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2010-‐2011: Getting stronger In 2010, with a new grant from the USDA Farmers Market Promotion Program, we were finally able to turn the Market Manager into a full time position, and hired Janelle Nicol, who had been a member of ENYF since 2009. With this expanded role, we were able to produce a community cookbook, recruit new vendors, and host more market events, including starting a partnership with a new local organization, Arts East NY.
Summer Saturdaze event at the market
In 2010, with a 3-‐year grant from the New York Community Trust via the Community Experience Partnership, we were able to expand our focus on three significant ways a) Expanding support to gardeners by: Offering focused support for elder gardeners (over 60 years old) who comprised the majority of gardeners we worked with; Supporting gardeners in East New York who were growing food even without a specific agreement to sell at the market, recognizing that growing food for yourself or giving it away is valuable too; Explicitly going beyond technical agricultural assistance to include things that we had previously done sporadically, like helping gardens to host public events, recruit new members, and create membership structures Annie Wyche and Rose Darden practice carpentry b) Training Community Educators by: Community Educator Kele Nkhereanye …partnering with Just Food to offer training for community members who are passionate and knowledgeable about food and health to build their teaching skills. Community Educators were then deployed to make presentations and conduct cooking demonstrations at community events, health centers, senior centers, and more.
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This program, coordinated by our new full time Markets and Outreach Coordinator, vastly expanded our outreach capacity, and created a new way to engage local residents who care about the issues we work on and want to be more involved in ENYF, but did not necessarily want to garden or vend at the market. c) Strengthening inter-‐generational relationships by: ..enhancing training for both adults and youth, and creating more opportunities for members of all ages to spend time together during work and social events. During this time, we initiated several important youth program improvements including -‐ Enhancing curriculum, including more opportunities for youth to cook food they'd grown -‐ Adding "externships" that engaged alumni in working at peer organizations -‐ Having interns who served as "crew leaders" prepare for 15 min before their workshifts -‐ Taking 3rd and 4th year youth interns out of weekly group summer workshops, in order to offer them college and career workshops, and to create a media project with them
(L) Staff, youth, and volunteers eating lunch prepared by youth using produce from the our farm and market (R) Youth program alumnus Roy Frias presents at a meeting in Alabama as part of his externship with WHY Hunger
In our efforts to keep improving our support for adult members, and make their time engaged with ENYF "worth it" for them, we started adding more specific content to our monthly meetings, sometimes through workshops like "Recruiting Volunteers" or topics focused more on strengthening connections between members like "Cultural Sharing Potluck." Through this time, we continued to adjust the supplies we offered to gardeners and the ways we distributed them, the ways we gave technical assistance, and the ways we gathered input from members. We also established a staff rotation to more consistently make phone calls to members before meetings, whereas we had done this sporadically before. All these changes resulted in increased attendance at our meetings and workshops.
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(L) Members at Cultural Sharing Potluck
In 2010 Dr. Christine Porter, who learned about us through Cornell graduate student Megan Gregory, invited us to join as a partner on an application to the USDA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative for the "Food Dignity" project. When funded in 2011, the Food Dignity partnership enabled us to expand our under-‐ utilized Backyard Exchange Program into a mini-‐grant program, and hire a part-‐time Community Organizer to facilitate this new program. We combined this with new youth program funding to hire another full-‐time staff member, Daryl Marshall, who had been involved with ENYF as a vendor and volunteer since 2008. This enabled us to expand the youth program, for which we regularly received over 120 applications, to hire 33 youth each year.
(L) Long-‐time ENYF member Gemma Garcia. Gemma received a mini-‐grant to scale up her honey production and start an ENY Beekeepers Cooperative. (R) Community Organizer & Youth Worker Daryl Marshall with youth intern Kalia Monlyn
ANALYSIS
SUMMARIZED Lessons learned: -‐ Be a learning organization -‐ Individuals matter -‐ Having staff matters -‐ Know who you are
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-‐ -‐
“Both/and” is powerful Partnerships are complicated
External factors:
DETAILED Lessons learned: BE A LEARNING ORGANIZATION: This begins with taking the time to learn what assets already exist in the community, and what needs really are, before initiating a project. Before any idea for the East New York Farms! Project was developed, community organizations partnered with Pratt to ask and learn about these assets and needs form the perspective of residents. This set the tone for a practice of constantly taking feedback, suggestions, experiences, and observations and using them to improve and adjust how we do things that was key to our success. The changes to programs that resulted were often not grand changes – like adding more social time to our member meetings -‐ and that sometimes made fundraising more difficult, as funders often want to fund "new initiatives.” We found that running our core programs basically the same way with constant small but significant improvements enabled us to best serve East New York, and take direction from our members and community. This is fundamentally different than conducting some kind of large quantitative (or even qualitative) community assessment once, and then assuming the learning or understanding process to be complete. Ways that we continued to take direction from our members and community varied by necessity. Structured methods of feedback and participation are important, but there is an inverse relationship between
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the structure and depth of participation and the number of people that can make the time to be that involved. Because of that, we learned that we needed to create lots of ways for members and community to give input. This meant that in some cases we used more fluid models of participation rather than more direct consensus-‐based decision-‐making, because coming to a true consensus often requires everyone involved in the decision to commit substantial time, to be available at the same time, and to have processed the same amount of information. Getting members to commit to this type of process is harder to achieve the more complex a project is. Some people may want to give input on soil health, others about market events, others about youth leadership. By creating multiple ways of weighing in on these topics, we could help keep people engaged by allowing them to focus their input on the topics they feel most invested in, and try to make their participation efficient. Growing in this way – growing slowly – was a key part of taking a learning approach for us, because it gave to learn what was realistic. For example, if we had gotten grants early on to develop a full-‐ time permanent market site (which was an idea initially raised), eventually the cost of the rent needed to sustain the site might have driven out gardeners and small entrepreneurs. Probably very few of our current vendors have enough supply and time to participate at that level. This could have effectively led to the end of the market by getting too big too fast. Growing slowly has also meant that we often started some limited version of new programs before we had any funding for them, so that we could spend the first year figuring out if an initiative worked and was needed, instead of raising money for a certain activities and then being “locked” into continuing with them even if we found that they were in reality not as needed or wanted by our community as we thought. For example, before we started our formal Community Educator training program, we piloted such a program, without dedicated funding, to figure out how much interest there was, and figure out the kinks, before seeking funding for a full program. Being a learning organization also requires being willing to realize that your initial plans were unrealistic. For example, the early thought that youth should work directly with gardeners, rather than as part of a coordinated program, did not work, and we changed to a model that demanded less coordination from gardeners and offered more focused leadership development to keep youth engaged and motivated. This was also the case when we started a “Share Table,” recognizing that few gardeners had the time or supply to participate in the market in the way we initially thought they would, by operating their own stands, but that they could contribute to a cooperative table run by youth interns. This has also led us to, at times, do things that other organizations don’t do – for example, the fact that we buy, store, and rent equipment for vendors at our market, or that we provide assistance for backyard gardeners as well as community gardeners, because we’ve learned that doing so vastly expands opportunities for participation. If we had only followed existing models, rather than carefully examining what would work for our community and our goals, we might have missed important opportunities to engage residents and grow our market. Because understanding our community is so important to being a learning organization, we have consistently prioritized hiring staff with previous knowledge of East New York and of ENYF. In 2010 we made a decision to take all educational requirements off of our job descriptions, because we felt specific skills and relevant experience (which could be gained through education but also in other settings) were more important. INDIVIDUALS MATTER: While a program based on one person's commitment may not be sustainable in the long-‐term, a few key committed individuals can make a huge difference. Some examples from our experience include: -‐ Markets often face a challenge of hitting the right balance of adequate supply and adequate demand at exactly the same time. Customers won't come if there aren’t enough vendors or products, and vendors won't come, or won’t stay, if there aren't enough customers. Johanna Willins and John Ameroso committed to selling their produce week after week in the first years of the market, to create the consistent supply that would be needed to eventually attract customers. Other early joiners like Eliza Butler, Leila Jamison, Adell Oliver, Gemma Garcia, and Alma Pearson sold their produce and contributed to variety and supply at the market when it was still quite small. -‐ Later in our history, other individuals had a huge impact on variety and volume that enabled our market to grow. Mike Rogowski's commitment to a fledgling market, then Alex Kravets' long-‐time participation,
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provided on average 5 times more volume of fresh produce to our community than we could have with urban grown products alone. Marlene and Dennis Wilks, and Pauline Reid made and continue to make a huge impact on our ability to attract customers with their substantial and consistent supply of Caribbean specialty crops. -‐ There are many examples from our history of people being willing to go beyond "their job.” This included Perry Winston writing grants to get the project started; Ana Aguirre and other UCC staff spending their lunch hours and weekends cleaning out vacant the lot next to the center; Aley and John driving to the Bronx at 5am on Saturdays so that there would be sufficient supply at the market; Georgine and Sarita writing grants when it was clear that someone needed to; David suggesting opening a Wednesday market and offering his time to staff it; Deborah expanding our support for gardeners when we had no obligation to do that and it required her to work harder and longer. HAVING STAFF MATTERS: Having staff, especially full-‐time long-‐term staff, and the funds to pay them, really matters for the long-‐term success of a project. Staff retention -‐ and structuring an organization such that you can retain staff -‐ makes a huge difference in the ability to build the relationships needed for effective community organizing, and in the ability to move forward based on deep understanding of what has worked and not worked. Even if there is consistency in leadership, but the people doing the on-‐the-‐ground work are constantly changing, a huge amount of knowledge and trust is lost. We also saw the importance of full-‐time staff roles from our experience transitioning the Market Manager position from part-‐time to full-‐time. Staff who worked with us part-‐time had more competing demands on their time, which made it harder for them to really "own" their positions, such that full-‐time staff often needed to take on a lot of the direction-‐setting for the work of part-‐time staff. Part-‐time staff were also often looking for full-‐time work with health benefits, and therefore more likely to leave their positions sooner. When we employed a part-‐time Market Manager, we had 4 different Market Managers in 3 years. Our first full-‐time Markets and Outreach Coordinator stayed for over 3 years. From 2010 to 2013, we experienced no staff turnover, and in fact, no full-‐time staff left positions with ENYF between 2008 and 2013. This lack of turnover, fairly unique among small non-‐ profits, felt like a significant contributor to our success. Because we strived to be a "learning" organization, staff were encouraged to reflect on their work and the overall work of ENYF to be able to do our work better each year. In a small organization where there are not many opportunities to “move up,” creating these opportunities for staff to grow in other ways is important. As a small organization, staff members need to be good at and willing to do a lot of things, because we don't have enough jobs for people's roles to be as highly specialized as they might be in larger organizations. This can make it difficult to find the right person for a position when that person needs to, for example, be able to write well and engage well with funders, be able to work well directly with teenagers, and be able to work in physically-‐demanding environment (lifting heavy things, working outdoors in hot weather). The limited salaries we are able to offer can further complicate this, and makes retaining the right people all the more important. It was also important to recognize, within our staff and membership, that leadership development is a long-‐term, ongoing process. Investing in leadership development for staff helped us to retain them, and enabled us to sustain the relationships needed to support and develop community leaders. Finally, staff are important because certain functions may just be too much to demand of people who are volunteering their time. While they may be extremely committed and skilled, they may have many other competing demands on their time that may need to take precedence, such as their paid work, their education, their health, and their family. Some examples in from our experience are: -‐ Developing the UCC Youth Farm. While committed volunteers spent time on this for years, it took staff specifically assigned to this project to be able to convert it into a productive farm. -‐ Managing membership at Hands & Heart. While this was initially handled by board members of the garden, we realized that being consistent about managing a waiting list, following up with everyone, and using a transparent process to assign bed allotments for a garden with 30+ members was a lot to manage. Board members were relieved when we offered to have UCC staff manage this aspect of Hands & Heart
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operations, to make sure everyone who inquired about space at Hands & Heart got a quick and thorough response. This suggestion may be contentious because there are examples of community gardens where volunteer members manage a lot of these functions. These are often (not always) gardens in higher income communities or with higher income members, where people may be able to create free time for themselves by paying for things that people in East New York may not be able to afford, like childcare in a convenient location, or an in-‐home washer and dryer. Gardeners in East New York, even when they are retired, often spend many hours traveling to and from doctors' appointments in health centers where they are more likely to wait a long time, or may provide childcare for other family members who cannot afford to pay for childcare. Those who work often work in jobs where they are less likely to be able to, for example, send emails about garden meetings from work. This is a complex issue, but the above may offer some insights. KNOW WHO YOU ARE: As attention to issues of health and urban agriculture grew, we realized we could not go after every grant opportunity, we could not say yes to every partnership, and we could not participate in every meeting, event, conference, or expo. It was important for us to keep in mind who we were most accountable to, and make decisions that benefit that group first, in our case, the East New York community. This strong commitment to "who we are" did initially seem to make our fundraising work harder, because we were committed to searching for funding to support our programs as we wanted them to be, as opposed to changing our programs based on what funding was most available. But ultimately this approach ensured that we stayed true to our mission, which kept staff and members engaged, sustained community support, and eventually helped us build a strong reputation with funders. As we grew and matured, we were able to stay firm on two key points -‐ A) We focus on East New York, and B) We focus on fresh food when it builds ownership, leadership, knowledge and/or food access for local residents. That helped us decide against other opportunities that would have diluted our mission or drained our energy from our core work. For example, since having staff (especially if those staff don't live in the community) growing salad greens on a rooftop to sell to high-‐end restaurants outside East New York does not accomplish the above goals, we would not pursue such an opportunity. It was at times hard to decide where to draw the line in respect to participating in events, because many events, seemed like they could eventually bring some benefit to East New York. A sustainability expo in Manhattan, for example, might have lifted the profile of urban agriculture generally, which could have eventually led to city government becoming more supportive, which could end up benefiting all gardens on city-‐owned land. In these cases, limited time became the important factor. Even when staff were willing to commit extra time, they had natural limits to how much they could work (mental or physical limits, external demands,) or how many things they could really give substantial attention to. This meant that attending an event that had only a very remote chance of generating a positive impact for our members would likely be taking time away from something that we needed to be doing more of, like outreach to gardeners or market customers, or support for youth. Because of this, we needed to decide carefully which opportunities were worth it. To ensure that we could stay true to our values, UCC and ENYF never aligned ourselves too closely with any politician. This at times made harder to get their financial support but proved worth it in the autonomy we were able to maintain. “BOTH/AND” IS POWERFUL: A concept that we’ve learned and embraced from VISIONS Inc, “both/and” has helped us remember that we can pursue multiple goals at the same time. ENYF developed as a strong program in part by combining functions that are often not combined by one project or organization. For example: -‐ Doing substantial work with both youth and adults. Though doing leadership development with these two groups requires different strategies, structures and skills, we recognized that both of these groups have important roles to play in strengthening our community. When we started Hands & Heart Garden, it might have been easier to start another farm run by our youth program, as the management of it would have certainly been more straightforward. But because of the nature of a youth program, our interns would not
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have had ownership over the space in the same way that adults would. We knew engaging adult leaders would be different, but would also strengthen our work and our community. -‐ Running our own farm and assisting other growers. Groups more commonly do one or the other, but we saw that having our own farm could provide a good space to demonstrate sustainable production techniques in a way that would benefit other growers. We also saw that there was great value for the youth in our program to have a growing space that they managed, as well as to have the experience of visiting other gardens in the neighborhood and learning from those growers. -‐ Income generation for local people AND affordable prices for our community. We pursued both of these goals so that we were neither missing the opportunity to generate much needed income for residents, nor were we encouraging vendors to sell their products at prices that local people could not afford. While none of the gardeners we work with earn their primary income from their produce sales, their income from the market provides important supplemental income. -‐ Valuing the tangible and intangible benefits of our programs, which has several dimensions. a) We tried to encourage as much production as possible on the land available to us, and also meet people "where they're at" by, for example, offering a "Share table" that could incorporate gardeners of all sizes. We recognized that the value of having people feel engaged in ENYF was not just measured through the produce they grew and brought to the market, but also through their interaction with the youth and other members, the informal outreach they did when they talked about the market with their neighbors, and more. This also included engaging people in programs that weren’t specifically focused on food production, but which brought our community together in support of healthier local food system. Some examples of these efforts are our Community Educator program, and our regular open volunteer days to create more ways for people to participate and learn about farming. b) We focus on food production as a key part of efforts to improve quality of life in our community, and also recognize that the barriers that keep gardens from growing as much food as possible are not always related to agricultural knowledge and supplies, but may start with other barriers like difficulty recruiting members, delegating responsibility, and retaining members. c) We strive for concrete changes that improve people's lives, like more fresh food or increased income, and value the less tangible relationships, gathering spaces, and connections that make people enjoy living in their community. We also found that these “intangibles” could affect more “concrete” health outcomes, considering that stress is a significant contributor to poor health. PARTNERSHIPS ARE COMPLICATED: It is not new to emphasize that successful partnerships require very well defined roles. But beyond this, they also require a genuine commitment from each partner to do what they said they would do, and to pitch in when new needs and issues arise, or a commitment from one partner to be the “lead” organization that deals with these issues as they come up. Accountability is also important, but genuine accountability is really hard to achieve in a partnership, since the traditional methods of accountability (changes in pay or employment) are often not possible to enforce with a person that works for another organization with a different supervisor. Rather, partnerships often work because the partners hold themselves accountable, because they genuinely care about the success of the program and respect their partners. Although roles may be clearly defined, unforseen issues always arise, and partners need to be willing to go beyond what they said they would do to meet pressing needs, avoiding the issues of "who's job is that" for a true partnership to exist. The feeling that this commitment was lacking was what ultimately ended UCC’s partnership with LDCENY. What often sustains this commitment from organizations is a clear sense of what they gain from participating, such as advancing their mission, or serving their members better. Partners often fail to follow through on things when they don't stand to gain as much as they think they are giving. For example, the idea that partners will, over the long-‐term, write grants to fund staff positions and programming that
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happens at other organizations may be unrealistic. This may work initially when programs are starting and organizations are sharing funds, but fundraising is hard work and it is ongoing. If long-‐term programs and staff positions are to be sustained, or if programs are to grow, each partner will likely need to take on the responsibility of fundraising for their own costs related to the project. Partnerships also benefit from a diversity of skills and resources. Organizations that are very similar may take opportunities to learn from each other as needed, but often don't gain enough from participating in ongoing structured partnerships to make it worth their time. It was this diversity that kept ENYPG partners together for almost 10 years. In partnerships or networks where similar organizations join together to try to effect some larger policy or structural change, such coalitions often require leadership from at least one organization with the time and expertise to commit to policy issues and to coordinating regional or national activities. Strong partnerships require supportive leadership from each organization. People who attend partnership meetings on behalf of their organization need to be empowered to make decisions at those meetings that will be honored. Some directors may be supportive mainly in their willingness be hands-‐off and let staff members commit their time to a project. For example, for 10 years the ENYPG met every two weeks, and leadership at Cornell Cooperative Extension and Pratt Institute Center for Community and Environmental Development allowed their staff members to continue spending time at those meetings and supporting ENYF even when they were receiving little or no funding for their participation. Partnerships may need to change or dissolve as a program matures. In the beginning, a large diverse group of partners lends credibility to new projects, and draws on a wide-‐range of skill sets. As a community-‐based project matures, hopefully community-‐based partners develop more capacity in areas that other organizations used to advise more heavily on. In the case of ENYF, UCC staff, who had much more regular contact with gardeners, were able to take on functions that Cornell Cooperative Extension used to do, which enabled Cornell, as a city-‐wide group, to shift time to assisting new groups. Staff at UCC also developed knowledge of various sources of funding, and enough direct contacts with city agencies, to take on functions previously carried out by Pratt. Also as the complexity of a project grows, defining clear roles and managing decision-‐making across multiple organizations can become just too time consuming. A complex partnership structure can also inhibit the ability of a project to be member or community-‐driven, because taking direction from residents can be lost in the shuffle when multiple organizations and their leadership must also be involved in decisions. When ENYF became a program of UCC, this leaner organizational leadership structure made it easier to have residents and members involved in key decisions and planning, as we were able to prioritize the schedule and meeting formats that worked best for residents, without juggling the schedules and needs of four organizations. Staff who are “shared” between organizations on partnership projects can have a very difficult role. They are supposed to be focused on a particular project, and are therefore accountable to the different partners and organizations involved in that project, but they are also staff of one specific organization. Salima Jones-‐Daley, the former Market Manager based at LDCENY, once how, when she first started in that role, she would say she worked for the East New York Planning Group, and the Executive Director at LDCENY would remind her, ‘No, you work for the LDC.’ Staff can also feel isolated, when they are more engaged in a project than anyone else in their office. Remembering her first year on staff at UCC, Aley said “I didn’t really get the sense that anyone really cared what I was doing…People in the daycare were like, ‘Oh that’s that girl that does something out there with the garden.’” USE CRISES AND TRANSITIONS TO BUILD STRENGTH: Our experience showed that conventional wisdom about what was possible or opportune did not always apply to our case, and we were able to actually make use of crisis points. ENYF started really in spite of prevailing factors. In 1994 USDA ended their urban agriculture program, which provided funding to support urban gardening through cooperative extension services across the country.1 In 1997 Mayor Giuliani announced plans to auction off hundreds of community gardens.2 Priscilla Wooten (then Councilmember in East New York) was described as hating gardens, presumably
1 Malakoff, David. (2004) “Final Harvest.” Community Greening Review. Volume 13. p. 59 2 Martin, Douglas. “A Garden Caught in a Housing Squeeze.” New York Times. 18 May 1998.
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because of her alleged alliances with for-‐profit developers who wanted to utilize land occupied by gardens.3 Her opposition to gardens was so strong that LDCENY needed to get her support to use the lot at New Lots and Barbey Street based on the idea of a "vendors" market, never mentioning gardeners. Several transition or crisis points, though challenging, provided us with opportunities to regroup and assess, and in some cases clarified issues or brought them to the surface. -‐ When Ojeda Hall left in 2005. Had Ojeda stayed on at LDCENY, she could have continued being considered the “Project Director” and LDCENY the lead organization even though they were not as active in the project. When she left, the group had to face that fact that it would not have made any sense to assign a new person at LDCENY to be ENYF Project Director, but rather UCC, and specifically Georgine, had functionally taken the lead by that point. -‐ When LDCENY got an NIEHS grant to start the Food Coop and Salima Jones-‐Daley shifted to that project in 2006. Had Salima stayed on as Market Manager, she could have continued in that role without a supervisor at LDCENY working on ENYF, but once we had to hire someone new, it made sense to have that person at UCC. This eventually made the need to end the partnership more clear. -‐ When Perry Winston left Pratt in 2007. ENYF had developed to a point where we did not really need the regular guidance of Pratt or Cornell, and did not need to continue to have ENYPG meetings. Had Perry stayed on at Pratt we may have kept meeting just because we had a good working relationship, but when he left, it was clear that Pratt’s role was no longer so integral that they would assign a new staff member to coordinate ENYPG meetings. -‐ When the container was compacted in 2006. As stressful as it was when it happened, this brought issues of lack of communication and lack of shared commitment to the surface in a way we could not ignore, and helped give us the impetus to end a partnership with LDCENY that had ceased to be a productive partnership for UCC. External factors: WHAT HELPED US ALONG: -‐ Some government programs were integral to our development, and the development of the conditions that allowed to ENYF to grow. At the federal level, these included the Housing and Urban Development Community Outreach Partnership Center grants (which funded the participatory planning process that led to ENYF) and Community Development Block Grants (which funded the development of the NYC GreenThumb Program); USDA Community Food Projects, Agriculture and Food Research Initiative, and Farmers Market Promotion Program. At the federal and state level, the WIC and Senior Farmers Market Promotion Programs had a significant impact. At the city level, access to city-‐owned land for community gardening through the GreenThumb program supported the development of dozens of East New York gardens. From 2008 onwards, The New York City Department of Health’s “HealthBucks” coupon program to incentivize the use of EBT at farmers markets (a $2 coupon for every $5 of EBT used) expanded access for low-‐income residents and sales for our vendors. -‐ Multi-‐year support and general support from various sources provided the stability and flexibility we needed to be effective, to grow our programs and to stay accountable to our community. In every case where we were able to significantly grow our program or a piece of our program, that growth was supported by multi-‐year funding, in some cases federal and in some cases private. Private funders also played an important role in providing general support or funding in ways that were more flexible than government grants typically are. Being in New York City, ENYF benefited from a degree of proximity to a variety of potential private funders. It generally seemed that if we could get foundations to do a site visit and see our
3 Newman, Andrew. “Legislator Points Finger at Former Councilwoman.” New York Times. 15 March 2008.
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program in operation, they understood the quality of our work. While this could be hard to achieve because East New York is physically far from Manhattan, and from the neighborhoods where funders often live (such that stopping by to see our market on the weekend might be time-‐consuming), we are at least within the same city. -‐ Development of a generally supportive atmosphere for improving health, environment, and open-‐space. We saw growing media interest in stories about local food and health, and a growing political interest in supporting – or at least seeming supportive of – urban agriculture. -‐ Housing redevelopment programs that repopulated ENY breathed new life into the community but were not classic gentrification in that they did not significantly change the racial composition or power dynamics of the community, nor did they cause large displacement of former residents. Though there have been some criticisms of the design of Nehemiah Homes (less front porch space and more driveways that may have encouraged isolation), many active gardeners in ENY (community and backyard) are Nehemiah Homeowners who took over abandoned gardens or developed new ones. -‐ Having some “outside” perspective at key points -‐ for example, from Heifer International during our partnership with LCDENY, or from Aley (then a Cornell intern) who suggested that a full-‐time staff position was needed, when it might have been awkward for any of the partners to suggest this because it required one organization getting more money and each other organization getting less. This advice was generally more useful when it came from people who knew and understood our program well, underscoring the value of long-‐term and ongoing leadership development or capacity building relationships such as the one we had with Heifer International. WHAT MADE THINGS HARDER: -‐ Many of our community members have personal experiences that range from neglect to discrimination to exclusion based primarily on race and income. A certain skepticism can develop from the cumulative impacts of these experiences, and that skepticism poses challenges for collaboration. East New York has also been plagued by political corruption, and it seems quite possible that this skepticism – or the belief that each person needs to look out for themselves and the people close to them -‐ has been a factor in this corruption. This case study is not sufficient to fully explore this, but it would be a major oversight not to mention the impact this has on community organizing, especially among older adults, in East New York. -‐ Poverty and scarcity of resources create many challenges in the lives of our community members. As noted above, this has implications for people’s ability to commit time to volunteer or community efforts, and certainly has implications for people’s ability to commit time and resources to buying and preparing healthy food. This same sense of scarcity, or belief that East New York might need to take any opportunity to get whatever resources it can, seems to have informed some short-‐sighted political decision-‐making, for example, local political figures who supported the proposal for a Walmart in East New York (eventually defeated) because of its potential to bring jobs, despite its historically poor treatment workers. Again, this is its own substantial topic, but its impact here should not go unmentioned. -‐ Our largest food and farm policy programs do not support the broad availability of fresh, healthy food for low and middle-‐income people. Commodities like wheat, corn and soybeans -‐ which are converted to flour and corn syrup and soybean oil and end up in so many unhealthy processed foods -‐ are heavily subsidized by federal funds. Yet producers of fresh, healthy foods struggle to access financial support for their farms. This makes the cost of junk food artificially low, while healthy food prices must reflect all of the real costs of production. When comparing the same categories of food – fresh, healthy or organic ingredients vs. unhealthy ingredients, or healthy prepared food vs. unhealthy prepared food – the unhealthy option is often more affordable and/or convenient, certainly in East New York. Local grocers carry the cheap, unhealthy foods they think people will buy, further exacerbating the problem of accessing fresh food. Many people do manage to eat healthy on a limited budget, but these people make a deliberate choice to seek out the places where they can get healthy ingredients at affordable prices and to take the time to prepare them. What is
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amazing is that, given these conditions, so many East New Yorkers do choose healthier options, including the approximately 18,000 customers who visit our market every year. Policies to subsidize the price of healthier foods and reduce subsidies for commodity crops could make it easier for more people to make healthy choices. -‐ Funders – private or public – often take a narrow view of issues like youth development, obesity prevention, or community organizing. It was at times hard for a program like ours -‐ designed first and foremost to respond to what our community wants and needs -‐ to fit into the scope of what funders want to see. For example, funders focused on more traditional youth programming might not fund us because we did not collect information from about interns’ Grade Point Averages. On the other, funders who wanted to fund youth organizing might not fund us because our youth interns work in strong partnership with adults, and therefore it was not a purely "youth-‐run" program. In 2009 we were unable to renew our funding from the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development because they shifted all of their funding to support only programs that focused on academic tutoring and tracked student GPAs. In recent years we also saw youth development funding – especially government funding -‐ shift heavily to “disconnected youth” – young people 16-‐24 years old who are not working and not in school. While this is an important issue, we chose not to pursue this funding because we felt that our program should be available to all youth in East New York. Our program was designed this way because youth live in a difficult environment simply by virtue of living in East New York, in addition to other challenges their family may be facing, even if they personally, for example, did not drop out of school, have not been involved with the court system, or are not in foster care. Our program also takes a more preventative approach by targeting younger youth, 13-‐18 years old. This case study was designed to cover the period of time up to 2011. Visit www.eastnewyorkfarms.org for current updates.
Linder, Marc and Lawrence S. Zacharias. (1999) Of Cabbages and Kings County: Agriculture and the Formation of Modern Brooklyn. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. p. 36 ii Thabit, Walter (2003). How East New York Became a Ghetto. New York: New York University Press. pp. 42, 45, 47, 65 iii Brady, James (1983). Arson, Urban Economy, and Organized Crime: The Case of Boston. Social Problems, Volume 31, No. 1. and Thabit, Walter (2003). How East New York Became a Ghetto. New York: New York University Press. pp. 80 i
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