Mina's House
We are building our headquarters - an outreach and training center, plus a place to store the local food we grow - while helping a life long community resident keep her home and nurse it back to health.
Leader
Sarah Auerbach
Location
1542 Hoe Ave Bronx , NY 10460
About the project
Ms. Mina is a generous woman of the community who has supported and volunteered at our Urban Farms in the Bronx for over a year. Currently, she is facing the possibility of losing her family home, of which she is the sole owner, where she has lived for over 40 years. Ms. Mina wants to help us, and we want to help her.
Ms. Mina has given us the use of her first floor five bedroom apartment to use as a training center, office space, food storage facility and distribution center as well as emergency housing for our volunteers, as needed. In turn, we want to help make sure she can keep her house up, and maintain ownership of it. It is old, needs some tender love and kindness...and she needs help with maintenance - both financially and technically.
We have operated for over a year, managing two farms with no local indoor headquarters! Now, we have two new spaces- for a total of four farms- and we are expanding our program to include free physical fitness workshops for the community. This space will make our community work much more efficient- and warmer in the winter- and therefore more effective. So, we need to raise some funds and get to renovations!
The Steps
We need to raise $9,000 by May 15th so that we can prevent a lien being placed on Mina's house and start renovating. It would be a tragedy to see this caring and generous woman of the community lose her house.
By helping her save her home, we gain a headquarters. To do this, we are going to fundraise for the rest of April and the beginning of May.
We've printed 10,000 palm cards for a "street team" effort, and we want to match that effort with an online campaign. After we accomplish this, we'll begin renovations. We are already using the space to house some full time volunteers and to host our workshops and trainings. So, we are motivated and excited to help Ms. Mina save her home- and she is super excited to see it become a flourishing community space.
Why we‘re doing it
Safe recreational spaces are as hard to find as healthy food is in the Bronx. Too many young men and women wind up in prison in our neighborhood. So, we are building a program that addresses all these concerns. We are building organic farms in the middle of the Bronx. We build it with students, at risk youth and formerly incarcerated adults to give a new, refreshing outlook on life that is ripe with potential and open doorways.
We donate the food we grow to local pantries and shelters and we use our spaces (we now have two farms and our new headquarters) to hold workshops and events for the community. We are also installing outdoor fitness equipment on our farms this spring, since nutrition and fitness go hand in had in fighting Obesity and Diabetes - diseases that run rampant in our neighborhood. We grow food and we grow growers.