project leader
Jamie K
location
540 President Street
latest update rss
Almost there!

the project

(French Underneath)

Transform a local lawn into an edible vegetable garden in Spring 2015!  Help us by volunteering, donating your lawn lending your tools, time or just a few dollars!  Our Grass to Gardens campaign is about creating easy to copy boxes that will be overflowing with fresh vegetables and to provide them to people in our local neighborhood of the Plateau.

Taking ownership of food production is an empowering step towards long-term self-sustainability and we want to help the residents of our neighborhoods in doing so. This project will also include door-to-door outreach, educational workshops and of course planting food in 2015, turning ordinary front yards into lush vegetable gardens.

All of this wouldn’t be possible without JoatU, and so this is a joint project in helping get the platform off the ground.  JoatU is an altruistic online classifieds that benefits community strengthening and encourages local exchange by encouraging its users to barter and give. Along with encouraging bartering and trade, JoatU offers "community points" for benefiting the community. 

We will also be sharing a portion of our contributions with Cycle Alimenterre.  Cycle Alimenterre transforms local residents' backyard spaces into thriving, diverse fruit and vegetable producing systems. We farm the vegetables in people’s backyards and distribute them by bicycle to market.

This neighborhood project has the aim to rethink cities and encourage and empower individuals to be involved in what they eat and the nature around them. Our very environment-friendly bicycle market is a hub to bring our community closer, share ideas about how we can be more sustainable as a society and to generally promote health and well-being. We cultivate and harvest our produce in an ecological way, using permaculture techniques that work in harmony with nature.

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Transformez une pelouse en potager au printemps 2015! Aidez-nous en devenant bénévole, en donnant accès à votre terrain, en prêtant vos outils, en donnant un peu de votre temps ou quelques dollars! Le projet Pelouse à Potager vise à créer des caissons faciles à fabriquer qui serviront à produire une récolte riche en légumes frais pour la communauté du Plateau-Mont-Royal.

Prendre en main la production de nourriture est une étape importante vers une plus grande autonomie et vers l’autosuffisance à long terme, et nous voulons aider les individus de notre communauté à y parvenir. Ce projet comprendra aussi du porte-à-porte, des ateliers éducatifs et, bien sûr, la création des potagers qui, dès 2015, transformeront les espaces gazonnés de Montréal en jardins luxuriants débordant de légumes frais.

Le démarrage de ce projet est rendu possible grâce au soutien de JoatU et sera réalisé en collaboration. JoatU est un projet altruiste d’annonces classées en ligne créé dans le but de bâtir et renforcer l’esprit de communauté en encourageant l’échange de biens et de services à l’échelle locale via le troc et le don. Outre le troc et le don, JoatU est un système de « points de communauté » qui récompensent les efforts de ses membres qui contribuent au mieux-être à la communauté. 

Visitez joatu.com et visionnez la vidéo explicative pour plus d’informations.

Une partie de nos contributions sera aussi partagée avec Cycle Alimenterre, un organisme local qui transforme les cours arrière des résidents en microfermes d’agriculture biologique et les distribue dans les rues du quartier via un vélo-marché.

Ce projet à échelle locale vise à repenser la vie urbaine en encourageant les individus et en leur donnant des moyens de s’impliquer dans leur alimentation et leur environnement. Notre vélo-marché respectueux de l’environnement est un lieu phare pour tisser des liens au sein de la communauté, échanger les idées sur le développement durable de notre société et pour promouvoir la santé et le bien-être en général. Nous cultivons et récoltons nos produits de manière écologique grâce à des techniques de permaculture en harmonie avec la nature

 

the steps

September 2014 - Recruit 100 members within 1km area surrounding Mont-Royal x Papineau for JoatU's local exchange pilot network. Continue working on the messaging features of the site. Have users complete their profiles filled out with offers & requests.

October-November 2014 - Increase membership and seek out partnerships with local businesses interested in working to facilitate the growth of this project. Integrate the opportunity for users to offer community offers directly to the community (e.g. teaching a public class)

December-January 2015 - Host regular freeskools, cooking days for the hungry, plan for the next growing season, plan expansion into other territories in Montreal and partner with other community organizations and businesses.

February-April 2015 - Continue expansion, plan for spring, map out areas to create community gardens, find more community-centers as centers for education and feeding the hungry.

 

why we're doing it

To increase community interraction, interdependency, localization and to bring a local audience to local actions.

budget

ITEM

COST

   

Gardening

 

Assorted Tools (what we can't borrow)

$250.00

Acre Box (6)

$300.00

Soil

$225.00

Seedlings

$300.00

Promotional Materials

 

T-Shirts (8)

$145.00

Flyers, Posters & Cards

$450.00

Lawn Signs (10)

$140.00

   

JoatU.com Programming

$1,500.00

Messaging & Contracts

 

* JoatU users can send each other messages within the app.

 

* All messages can be forwarded to users email address (configurable in preferences)

 

* Special “contract” messages may be created, which facilitate a trade of goods / services / skills between two users.

 

* Offers gain rating & reference features, where users who have transacted for an offer can rate it and / or leave a reference about it.

 

* Users gain reference features, where users who have transacted can leave personal references for each other.

 
   

Cycle Alimetaire Tools

 

Industrial Salad Spinner

$250.00

Bike Trailer Hitch

$175.00

Seeds $175.00

TOTAL COST:

$3,910



SUBTOTAL = $3,910
ioby Platform Fee  $35
3rd Party Credit Card Processing Fee (3% of non-match dollars) $57
TOTAL TO RAISE = $4,002


RAISED = $4,181.00
ioby Platform Fee  $35.00
3rd Party Credit Card Processing Fee (3% of $2,241 raised in non-match dollars) $64.25
TOTAL TO DISBURSE = $4,081.75

 

updates

Almost there!

Thank you to everyone for all of the support!  The campaign has been coming along fantastically!  We've had a great reception with friends and neighbors, have raised over 70% of our goal so far and have been written about in the CDEC-Network and in Concordia University's newspaper The Link!  Only FOUR days left to reach our goal!  Let's get there together!

photos

This is where photos will go once we build flickr integration

donors

  • Anonymous
  • John Ringland
  • Mauricio
  • Zoe P.
  • Door-to-Door Donations
  • New Colony Farm (Montreal)
  • Sarah Rogers
  • Julie
  • Heather C.
  • Alisa Soukhodolskaia
  • Anonymous
  • alexa r.
  • Gabriela G.
  • Coop Sur Genereux
  • NewCountry.org
  • Anonymous