SLUG: San Francisco League of Urban Gardeners 2088 Oakdale Avenue San Francisco, CA 94124 (415) 285-SLUG Building Community Through Gardening and Greening Excerpts from an article by Mohammed Nuru and Kate Konschnik in the SLUG Newsletter, Summer 1997 Too often, organizations attempt to meet a community’s needs with outside resources. Rather than “living off the pathology of the community,” as economist Michael Porter calls it, we need to recognize local strengths, and develop home-grown skills and resources to address community challenges. Job training and creation is a positive first step towards building local self-reliance. Terrell Smith is a Bayview native and the Director of SLUG’s Youth Department. When asked why he works for a gardening group, Terrel smiled. “I didn’t come here to be a gardener. I saw gardening as a tool to build community and help people.” This view stresses the importance of urban gardening and greening. We’re not just raising radishes and roses; we also promise a bumper crop of real job skills, and opportunity. On a recent bi-annual retreat, SLUG staff were asked to define “environment.” The responses from our diverse group -- “trees and plants” but also “home,” “family,” and “neighborhood” -- reflect how we have grown over the years to include social issues in our gardening programs. “Environment” and “Community” are interchangeable concepts at SLUG; we support each other as we work to green the urban landscape. SLUG is committed to building community by meeting community needs from the inside. Gardening and greening workshops, jobs and job training, education, and emotional support, these are all integral elements in our mission. The road is long but the efforts are worth it. When people work together to gain control over a park or an empty lot, they learn to gain control over their own lives. Similarly, when we can inspire composting and gardening enthusiasts, we are proud of our purpose. SLUG invests in people. We spend time helping employees get their driver’s licenses, graduate from high school, and fight evictions, knowing that a stronger person can make stronger contributions on the job, and to the community. We provide our members with information for masters’ theses, or directions to the nearest plants supply store, knowing that their positive experience with us will be passed on, word-of-mouth, to inspire more people to come out and support our community-building efforts. To us, this nourishing cycle is simply common sense. With welfare reform’s effects on the horizon, our challenge to train and employ people is greater than ever. Nationwide, unemployment is at a record low (4.3%). However, some populations, especially those in cities with limited access to the new jobs, run a much higher risk of unemployment. 10% of African-American adults, and 33% of African-American teens in the U.S. cannot find jobs. In the public housing developments where SLUG works, most cannot find jobs. In the public housing developments where SLUG works most extensively, unemployment tops 80%. Job opportunities must be created where the poorest people live. And SLUG challenges the belief that people need to “get out” in order to succeed. Instead, jobs which contribute to the community’s well-being are the most valuable, and the most meaningful. Cultivating community in low-income neighborhoods means creating local economic opportunity, and developing local job skills to meet these opportunities. When we begin landscaping and garden projects in the Tenderloin, in the Mission, in Bayview-Hunter’s Point, we hire and train from those neighborhoods. Community-based work is more accessible to people with children and limited transportation, and work that benefits the community has an empowering effect on its workers. SLUG’s St. Mary’s Urban Youth Farm, one of the only inner-city farms in the nation, was just a trashed-out, abandoned stretch of land four years ago. SLUG hired youth from the neighboring housing developments to help clear the land and start a farm, complete with an orchard, community garden, and food and flower production areas. The Youth Garden Interns are proud of their work, and they feel that working at SLUG gives them a sense of “family... if SLUG let me down, I really wouldn’t know where else I could turn.” The internship program, which combines garden work, a City College certificate program, violence prevention and health workshops, and mentorship elements, is a real, positive alternative to the streets for many youth. Overwhelmed by the flood of applicants to the Youth Garden Internship Program, SLUG launched additional job training programs for low-income community residents, and young women and men with jail or juvenile records. For example, SLUG veterans Elmo Wright and Cardell Coleman work with juvenile offenders and at-risk teens to landscape the Youth Guidance Center. Older crews have been hired to landscape the Sunnydale Housing Development, and senior housing sites throughout the city. SLUG’s Environmental Justice Department trains teens to educate and organize others on environmental issues affecting their neighborhoods. Urban Herbals provides young people with marketing and management skills in an organic food products business. All of these programs are linked by one belief -- that jobs can benefit the environment and the community. ... SLUG has cultivated many community-driven projects, and has nurtured the neighborhood leaders who implement them. Locally-grown ideas, which are the most appropriate for meeting a neighborhood’s unique challenges, are sprouting and blooming with SLUG support. As we continue to strengthen our job training programs, we hope to contribute our part to the national dialogue on economic empowerment. Bring your time, expertise, and resources to the table. Come build gardens, and community, with us.