My friend Josh Mamis is Senior Director of Community Engagement at United Way of Greater New Haven. That means he does good for a living! How many people can say that? It also makes it a little easier for him to wrangle me in to help.
This morning Clicky and I joined Josh to help document “Hands-On Saturday.”
Volunteers at four locations were prepping community garden plots. In the most unglamorous sense that meant turning heavily weed lots into places where vegetables will be grown.
This is worthwhile on a bunch of levels at once! Converting vacant, overgrown lots helps restore some community pride. Growing vegetables also makes healthy, but expensive, food available to more people. Everything about this program is good!
We started at some land under the Phoenix Press Wind Turbine (the windmill you see as you cross the Q Bridge), moved to a plot inside a public school courtyard, a vacant lot owned by the New Haven Land Trust and finally the community garden site on what was the Meadowbrook Golf Course in Hamden. There were volunteers at each site working up a sweat.
Seriously, how can you not think this was a great way to start the weekend?
It’s nice to see the community working together. Putting the unused land to good use. I was surprised to see the Tree of Life sculpture at the school. My husband John did the fabrication & laser work on all those circles with the figures in them. I was always impressed with that sculpture by Douglas Kornfeld. Great pictures.
Here’s a link to more info on this sculpture at the Clinton Avenue School in New Haven: http://www.awaka-inc.com/NewHaven05/ClintonSchool_1.html
Love the picture of the little girl with the pretty smile!