Project Green Space
Project Green Space will host multiple community cleanups and educate the community about healthy choices through a community garden. We will plant fruits and vegetables that will be available to the community.
Leader
Charlie Harris
Location
1649-1799 Weston Avenue Niagara Falls, NY 14305
About the project
Project Green Space has been rehabilitating an empty lot on Weston Ave since summer 2016 to build a community garden. In an attempt to revitalize neighborhoods, we will continue to work with many different organizations to tackle quality of life issues pertaining to food deserts in Niagara Falls. We will raise the awareness of community members surrounding food deserts including education on gardening, recycling, and bringing new life to empty spaces.
Project Green Space will not only bring food to our community, it will build community relations and self-sufficiency. Over the past summer, our program also built in a crucial component of workforce development for youth. We employed 6 youth during the summer months to plan, deisgn, build, plant, landscape, and decorate the lot on Weston. They have dubbed it the "Dream Garden" and made truly inspiring progress.
Our aim now is to keep this program going throughout the year and to open it up to 4 more youth, for a total of 10 Project Green Space Youth Advocates learning and working on the garden and other community improvement projects year round. During the winter months, they will continue to build their knowledge and skills through workshops, field trips, and service work. Our enthusiastic and creative youth also have plans to create a musical about their experience gardening and build a statue from recycled items. We are open to where more of this work takes us and want to be able to tell these youth that the sky is the limit for what they can create in this space!
The Steps
- Continue upkeep work on the current lot until weather no longer allows.
- Hire 4 more youth advocates.
- Take field trips to Mass Ave Proejct in Buffalo, other farms to expand knowledge and experience.
- Host series of workshops throughout winter in partnership with Field & Fork Network and Cornell Cooperative.
- Continue writing and practicing the Dream Team musical, hopefully to perform in spring.
- Build and paint a fence and benches using recycled objects.
- Prepare the garden for the next growing season in spring 2018.
- Continue evolving and planning new garden ideas as we go!
Why we‘re doing it
Project Green Space addresses both issues of blight in the built environment and food access issues. We will do this by rebuilding and beautifying a vacant space, and by providing and educating people with healthy food. We also hope to empower youth by helping them develop and hone their skills & abilities through hands-on and engaging community work.