2. Moving Community Gardening Forward in NC
-- Statewide Action Planning Retreat
• June 25, 2008
• JC Raulston Arboretum at NCSU
• Sponsors: NC Division of Public Health;
NC Cooperative Extension
Outcome: 40 attendees came to a consensus that gardeners
would benefit from networking and garden planning tools as
well as coordinating efforts on a statewide and regional basis
Photos
courtesy of
Diane Beth
Adapted from Partnering Up: Growing State Level Capacity for Community Gardening ~Diane Beth
3. NC Farm to Fork Summit (2009)
Adapted from Partnering Up: Growing State Level Capacity for Community Gardening ~Diane Beth
5. Approx $300,000
provided (2010-2013)
to fund new or
existing community
gardens across NC!
Adapted from Partnering Up: Growing State Level Capacity for Community Gardening ~Diane Beth
6. The Organization Today
• As of Oct 2011 NCCGP is a nonprofit membership
organization made of partners across the state
interested in “growing” community gardens.
• Fiscal Agent:
• Vision: Increase the quantity, quality and sustainability
of community gardens in North Carolina.
• Personnel: currently no staff, working Board of Directors
(since Jan 2013), volunteers, members
• Structure: 11 directors from across NC and 6 leadership
committees working towards accomplishing objectives
13. Connecting People Online
• Over 880 people connected and sharing
information about NC community gardens
•
•
•
425 -- NCCGP Facebook
290 -- NC community garden
listserv
165 -- NCCGP Twitter
• Increases
visibility of NC
community
gardens
17. Looking ahead…
• Webinar series
• Annual members
meeting +
fall event?
• Garden directory &
online
resources
• Engage members!
• Identify best practices (ex. land use
ordinances) to support community gardens
• Funding for gardens, programs and staff
18. In the future…
• National (ACGA) conference in NC?
• Regional hub gardens to serve as
educational/resource centers?
• Regional or statewide community garden
tours?
19.
20.
21.
22.
23. Why “Partner Up”
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Sharing successes and lessons learned
Avoiding recreating the wheel
Funding opportunities
Strength in numbers
State organizational policy and procedure
changes
Folks want a clearinghouse of resources and
communications
Integration with related initiatives (Farm to
School, etc)
Local/community voices needed in state
conversations
Sustaining the momentum
Adapted from Partnering Up: Growing State Level Capacity for Community Gardening ~Diane Beth
Notas do Editor
I’m assuming not everyone knows the history of this group… so a very abbreviated look at the past.
In 2008 under the leadership of Diane Beth with the NC Division of Public Health and Drs. Lucy Bradley, Keith Baldwin, and Susan Jakes with NC Cooperative Extension this statewide action planning retreat was organized. The group came to the conclusion that it would beneficial to provide networking opportunities and coordination at a statewide level for existing local-level community garden efforts.
Thus the NCCGP was formed!
In 2008 and 2009 CEFS convened hundreds of food system stakeholders across the state in regional meetings in order to develop “game changer” strategies to transform North Carolina’s food system. Through NCCGP’s ongoing coordination with the NC Farm to Fork Initiative, community gardens were prioritized as one of the key “game changers”.
Then community gardens were listed in the NC Farm to Fork statewide action guide.
In 2010 BCBSNC and NCRPA partnered on the Nourishing NC initiative to fund cgs partnering with Parks & Rec, Health Dept and Coop Extension.
Also in 2010 I started work with Keith at NC A&T Cooperative Extension on a multi-county, 5-year project which blended into coordinating statewide efforts.
Nourishing NC also provided us with some funding to do a strategic planning retreat and create a NC community garden directory
Fast forward to a snapshot of NCCGP today…
We are a nonprofit, membership organization. Although we do not yet have tax-exempt status and have been working under our fiscal agent (The NCPHF) since Dec 2012.
Currently we have no staff (although we’d like some!) and operate through time given by the working Board of Directors, volunteers and our members!
This is our 2013 plan. I know it’s small but I decided last minute not to print 130 copies of it off so this is what you get.
It’s divided into 4 core objectives as you can see on the left which correspond with activities and results.
The first objective results in NCCGP being a functioning nonprofit able to accomplish its mission.
I won’t lie that we spent a lot of our first year as a nonprofit working on this section.
2nd objective – things like identifying best practice land use policies that support community gardens (something our Systems View Committee is working on) can lead to sustainable gardens being established across the state
Connect leads to people being engaged in cgs statewide and have the means to be able to obtain and share information among others
And finally educate: resulting in people being able to find the resources and information they need to create successful cgs.
I’d just like to point out a few results from the bottom two sections (Connect and Educate).
All of our Committees fit somewhere into helping to accomplish the objectives for this plan, and in a few moments I’ll let the Committee Chairs fill you in on their specific committee plans.
In my opinion one of the most exciting things we’ve done so far is to connect people with people – both in-person and virtually. Here it was in-person, just like today!
This workshop last Oct brought together 50 garden leaders to learn about building community-supported, well-organized community gardens.
Participants said networking and relationship building was the most useful part of the workshop
Some of the other results are that within 6 months of the workshop, 5 additional trainings using the GC curriculum had been offered
76% of the people who responded to an evaluation said they helped to start new garden projects after this workshop
We are also connecting people virtually. Over 880 people are now connected and sharing information about funding, resources, events, news stories from community gardens, etc
Increases visibility of NC community gardens among general public and among state/national organizations
Just the other day someone from ACGA wrote indicating NC might be a good location for the national community garden conference in 2015!
If you’re wondering at this point how to connect online with us…
We also of course have this nice website that helps to serve as a clearinghouse. A lot of what we’re trying to do here is share information about what is going on across the state at the local level.
This is a screen shot of the NC community garden directory. Not only is this a great source of information but it’s a great way for people to connect with community gardens and vice versa!
There are about 67 gardens currently signed up but we know there are waaaay more gardens than that from a previous survey in 2008 and also from other orgs organizing gardens on county/regional levels
PLEASE help us spread the word about this great resource and get more gardens signed up in your area! NCCGP.org
Why should people sign up for this…
-- strength in numbers! The sheer numbers of gardens can help us create a case for more funding and resources to go towards gardens
-- we can show the growing interest in community gardens over time because we can compare gardens by “year started”
-- people looking to engage with gardens will be able to find gardens in their county
-- gives gardens without their own website a free online profile that they can use to recruit gardeners/volunteers and display info about their garden
Annual fall event/NCCGP members meeting
2014 community garden webinar series
Continue to develop garden directory and online resources
Identify best practices (ex. land use ordinances) for supporting community gardens
Seek funding for gardens, programs and staff
Why “Partner Up”
Sharing successes and lessons learned
Avoiding recreating the wheel
Funding opportunities
Strength in numbers
State organizational policy and procedure changes
Folks want a clearinghouse of resources and communications
Integration with related initiatives (Farm to School, etc)
Local/community voices needed in state conversations
