Mott Hall IV Middle School

The garden brings students, their families, and community members together to learn about how food is grown while addressing the lack of access to fresh, affordable, and healthy food in the Brownsville community. This garden is a collaboration in the best sense of its meaning. The space, which was previously a vacant lot earlier this year, was secured with the assistance of 596 Acres, an organization helping community members access vacant lots in its communities. The Brooklyn Food Coalition coordinated a partnership between two of its partner schools, which are co-located in the same school building, with the Bed-Stuy Campaign Against Hunger (BSCAH), which is a food pantry that, in addition to receiving food from the Food Bank of NYC, grows fresh, culturally-appropriate produce for its clients, which they would not otherwise have access to in their communities.

The goal of this garden is to function as both an educational space for students and a production space for BSCAH. On the education front, BSCAH currently runs its Stomp Out Obesity program, an 8-week program that consists of 1-hour nutrition education class and a 1-hour garden education class during the week. Students learn the basics of nutrition, while being introduced to new vegetables, learning how to grow plants from seed, discovering the value of urban green spaces in their communities and share their knowledge with their families. On the production front, the majority of the produce is going to BSCAH's pantry clients. Produce will be provided to families from the two schools, Mott Hall IV Academy and Eagle Academy for Young Men, who participate in supporting the garden. We have been growing a large volume of salad greens we are planning to get into the school cafeteria and are currently providing produce for the Eagle Academy after school culinary program.

This grant will provide funding to build a shade structure in the space that will function as an outdoor classroom and farm stand to sell food to the community. Our garden gets lots of sunlight, which is great for the plants but can be harsh for students who spend a lot of time standing in the garden. With the generous help of a local architect, we have designed a structure that provides shade and outdoor seating for classes in the garden. We are planning to have other schools in the communities, which do not have gardens, to be able to bring classes on field trips to the space to learn about food and gardening. The structure will also allow us to set up a farm stand so community members who are not clients of the pantry, can get purchase affordable, healthy food in their own communities. Several people have stop by the garden to ask if they would be able to purchase produce from the space because they are trying to eat healthy but are tired of traveling to other neighborhoods to buy their food. If we are able to begin selling our produce, we'll be able to generate funds that would go directly back into the garden, creating a sustainable funding source.