Fresh Food For Everyone!
Mission: To Make Fresh, Safe Food Accessible To Everyone. (Start Local…And Grow!)
No matter what your income, your location, your race, your religion…everyone has the right to have fresh, safe food…every day.
Plan Of Action: Start Local, Grow Extra, Expand Our Reach
It’s easy to get started in making a difference. If you already have a garden, you probably already produce more than you can use yourself. If that’s the case, then share your surplus with your family, friends, neighbors, local food pantry, etc. Then, when you’re planning and planting your garden each spring, plan on planting a little extra…plant an extra row to share with your local food pantry and people in need.
The next step is to start a Community Garden. Community Gardens can benefit everyone. Elderly people who can’t garden, people with little or no space for a garden, people
who have never gardened before and need help learning how to garden, people who have needed to move during the growing season and don’t have a garden of their own, people who travel a lot and can not care for a garden. These are just a few examples of people who can benefit from a Community Garden, this does not include all the people in our community that can benefit from the abundant harvest that can come from a Community Garden.
The size of the Community Garden directly affects the number of people we will be able to impact. Our first focus should be on our immediate community. Single parents, widows/widowers, children, etc. After we meet the needs of our community we can expand to neighboring communities. We may also be able to supply fresh vegetables to our school lunch program.
Once we grow our reach to neighboring communities, the best way we can help others is by education and duplication. We can not grow all the food it takes to feed the world all by ourselves! We can educate others about gardening and how to start a community garden project. Then they will be able to take care of their own community and they will be able to educate others in the same way. This should not be about us solving world hunger, this should be about being a model to others on how we can take care of our community the way God intended for us to. “Love your neighbor as yourself” Romans 13:8-10
Plan Of Action: Teach People To Cook With Fresh Ingredients
Even in our rural community there are lots of people who don’t know how to cook with fresh vegetables…there are probably lots of people who don’t know how to cook anything that doesn’t come out of a box. This is sad but true. It is up to us (people who know how to cook from scratch, and know how to use fresh ingredients) to teach others what we know.
We can host cooking classes on a regular basis and invite people in to learn what we know. Again, what better way to teach and show the world how to care for each other than by being a model? We can talk about caring for others all we want, but it means nothing until we actually do it!
Plan Of Action: Teach People How To Preserve Fresh Food
If you think there are a lot of people who don’t know how to cook with fresh fruits and vegetables, just think how many people don’t know how to harvest, process, can or freeze fresh produce.
Again, instead of saying how sad it is that no one knows how to preserve fresh produce, the best way to fix the problem is for people who have the knowledge to share it. Each fall we can host classes on how to harvest, how to can and how to freeze fresh produce.
Plan Of Action: Teach Others How To Live A Sustainable Life
As we grow our own food and show others how to do the same, more and more people will be learning how to live their own sustainable life. The more people who learn how to grow fruits and vegetables, the less hunger there will be in the world.
This is starting out as a local ministry, but there’s no reason we can’t take this around the world. There are endless areas in the US that need this information, let alone places around the world where there are food shortages. How to grow your own food and develop community gardens can be useful to people everywhere. From Detroit to Los Angeles, from Haiti to China.
Funding:
Donations are welcome, we plan to develop a sponsorship program with different levels of sponsorship available. But for right now anyone wishing to donate to the Fresh Food For Everyone Campaign, we ask you to direct your support to the Etna Green Church of Christ and mark it Food For Everyone.