Food Cycle Collective Community Partnership Proposal
Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial ParkCommunity Farm & Composting Project Food Cycle Collective is a collaborative initiative rooted inPomona that centers composting, bikes, food, andcommunity-building. We come together as a collective tocare for the earth and the people on it. We move in waysthat value relationships, support empowerment, promotepositive transformation, and increase health for individuals,communities, and environments.
We are helpful, creative, caring, courageous,compassionate, consistent & dependable, responsive,patient, and willing to work for meaningful change. Werecognize and acknowledge our interdependence and thatmany issues affecting us are integrated. We strive to growour capacity and engage our creativity to meet the needsaround us with constructive sustained action rather thanignoring, denying, or lashing out at people or problems.
The vision of Food Cycle Collective is to be part of acommunity that lives for sustainability, that embodiescare, and meets the needs of self, each other, andthe earth. We want to help decentralize the food andwaste systems and bring them back to thecommunity level. We want a world where power isnot connected to structural position or systemicprivilege, but rather a world where we recognize thepower inherent in all people. We want a world wherepeople are motivated to help one another for thepurposes of being in community with each other, andnot because of financial incentives or to improve theirimage. We want to keep food, water, transportation,safety and security accessible to everyone byworking to grow and sustain our community throughnonviolence. We envision a future with healthy soil,healthy food, health people, healthy communities,and a healthy world.
Since we began in the spring of 2020, we have carried out weekly food scrap collections in partnershipwith a number of Pomona-based initiatives and community members such as with farmers markets,food pantries, restaurants, cafes, grocery stores, and neighbors. We have also conducted a group ridethrough the community every Sunday since the summer of 2020, where we compost food scraps atlocal gardens as well as distribute prepared food and other needed supplies to people currently living in
the streets. We currently partner with 5 local community gardens provisioning them with the compostneeded to sustain their growing operations and regularly engage with over 100 community members ona weekly basis during our community food scrap drop-off and pick up activities, community compostingprograming, food rescue, preparation, & distribution work, and street outreach efforts.
Food Cycle Collective has been active in thecommunity for over 2 years, playing a supporting rolein many gardens. We recognize that our style isdeeply characterized by relationship building, genuinecommunity engagement, dialogue, active co-creation,compassion, and follow through. We would like theopportunity to be a lead steward of a garden in thecommunity and build up a dynamic and mutuallysupportive community resource for our city.
We believe that Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial Parkis a solid location for a community farm and compostproject. The park has ample space for growing andcomposting in the southeast corner, which would notdisturb the large open areas of the park. Theneighborhood is one of lower income, where people aremore likely to have trouble accessing high quality, freshfoods. Over the past several weeks we have donedoor-to-door outreach and found that neighbors havebeen excited to receive fresh veggies and haveexpressed interest and support of a garden in the park.We also believe that there is deep alignment between thevalues of our group and the namesake of the park, MartinLuther King Jr., and we would be honored to uplift andembody his deep commitment to social transformationand justice through compassion, empowerment, andnonviolent direct action.
Proposed Location of Community Farm & Composting Initiative Purpose & Goals of Community Farm & Composting Initiative We see community farming and composting projects as capable of serving many purposes andachieving many goals that benefit both the community and the environment. In this sense, our broadpurpose is to develop a space and regular programming that deeply serves the health and well-being ofthe community and ecosystem of the park.
We see this happening through supporting the following more specific goals:- Increasingaccess to healthy, nutrient dense, freshfoodsgrown in the community andalongside community members- Supporting theactivation of the parkthrough landstewardship & beautification as well asthrough hosting welcoming, regular, and dynamic programming- Providing opportunities foreducation and empowermentaround important skills such asgrowing food, making compost, bike-related transportation, and community building throughnonviolent means- Engaging and involving the communitythrough outreach,programming, shared leadership,food & compost distribution, and relationship building
- Promoting the use of public space toserve the public goodthrough demonstrating responsibleresource stewardship and hosting programming responsive to basic community needs- Contributing to thehealth and safety of individuals,community, and the environmentthrough hands-on and relational activities that center transformation of unhealthy and unjustsystems through stopping activities which do not serve health, creating or utilizing new orforgotten systems which do serve health, being present and supportive during the process ofhealing as well as celebrating the profound beauty, strength, health, and goodness that alreadyexists in our community.
Proposed Design & Programming
Since the park already has many amenities, including a playground, seating areas, mature trees, askate park, as well as a restroom, our proposal addresses the addition of growing areas (~50’ x 100’and ~40’ x 80’), a composting area (~40’ x 50’, with active composting limited to 750 sq ft.) and area forstoring bulk materials, such as woodchips, to be used in crafting compost and maintaining the gardenpathways. We imagine leaving a border of ~5-10 feet along the wall and fenceline to allow for a walkingpath around the perimeter.
Our team has participated in designing andbuilding several garden spaces in conjunctionwith the Community Composting for GreenSpaces program and we propose to build theMLK Community Farm and CompostingProject through regular weekly communitywork days. In our experience, communityfarms are successfully built when 3-5 peoplecommit to coming at the same day and time,week after week, working steadily toimplement a plan. This model allows forcommunity involvement in the process ofbuilding the site, is sustainable for activecommunity members (who may have manycommitments in the community), andtransitions nicely to regular weekly communityfarm, compost, and neighborhood activities.
We imagine building out the community farm andcomposting project over the course of 6 months to 1 year,with the first harvests being made available to the communityat approximately 6 months after initial site preparationsincluding water delivery to the farming area. We wouldconduct weekly on site programming for 3-8 hours on aweekday afternoon and evening and commit to the presenceof 2-3 members of our team each week to support buildingbeds, installing irrigation, planting, composting, harvesting,community canvassing, as well as the development ofcommunity programming, such as workshops following theestablishment of the growing space.
Garden Resources & Needs
The MLK park space is well equipped with the basics tosupport a community farm. The site already has a restroom,storage area, water, and open space suitable to farming andcomposting. Importantly, the area is also accessible by truckfor the delivery of materials such as soil and woodchips,which will be needed to establish the community farm.Approval from the city would be needed to use the restroom,storage area, water, and farming space--this proposalrequests approval of this support for public benefit from theparks commission and city council.
Food Cycle Collective is held by the nonprofit IntegrativeDevelopment Initiative, which is a 501(c)3 and has bothGeneral Liability Insurance (1 mil/2mil thresholds) as well as
Workers Compensation Insurance. We can easily provide the city with a COI, naming the city as anadditional insured. We also have access to the tools needed to launch the MLK project which includeour: -ebikes and trailers (used for food scrap delivery as well as food distribution)-Shovels, pitchforks, wheelbarrows-irrigation supplies Through our current partnerships we have access to soil to start the garden, food scraps to continuemaking soil, trucks to transport materials, and woodchips. We can leverage these existing partnershipsand resources to launch the MLK project.
Our team is composed of skilled workers and we anticipate launching this project with a combination ofpaid, volunteer, and community organizing efforts. We currently have the resources to launch theproject including for labor and additional materials in our unrestricted funds. However, if this project isapproved we would like to apply for a D2 microgrant to support the weekly programming, so that wecan conserve these funds for contingencies and launching projects where no funding is available.
We welcome feedback and suggestions from neighbors, the Parks Commission, City Council and thecommunity at large and look forward to a successful community farming and composting project at MLKpark. Please feel free to reach out to us with any further questions, comments, concerns, orcelebrations--we look forward to working together to serve our community. Thank you for theopportunity to share our ideas and efforts!