Angel ’25, will spend the month of August volunteering at his local community garden. He looks to educate his neighborhood about food insecurity and how to grow your own crops.
In recent years and even before the Covid epidemic, food insecurity has been a significant problem in Chicago affecting up to 20% of households. The driving force behind this mind-boggling statistic is systemic inequity that hinders the income of colored communities like mine, Little Village. Compared to areas like downtown Chicago, small predominantly colored communities such as Little Village suffer from food insecurity on a greater scale and contribute much more to the 20% than downtown residents.
Throughout August, I will be volunteering every day at my local community garden helping with, cultivating crops, building plots, and handling livestock! The money gifted from the grant will go towards equipment meant for maintaining the garden including thermometers, pots, hose nozzles, and gloves. My aspiration for this project is to aid inside the garden and aid outside the garden by educating my neighborhood about food insecurity and how to grow crops from your backyard. To reach a greater audience, information will be put on flyers which will be distributed and put on display around Little Village.
The community garden I will be volunteering and investing in is located in La Villita Park and is owned by a nonprofit organization called LVEJO (Little Village Environmental Justice Organization). The garden officially broke ground in 2014, allowing community members to freely own plots inside the garden to grow crops and plants of their choice. Furthermore, LVEJO owns plots inside the garden where they grow vegetables and raise livestock, for food that is distributed to members of the community for free!
Issues regarding food insecurity are of utmost importance to me because, like many other town residents, I grew up in a low-income household which made it difficult to eat nourishing foods every day because purchasing fresh, nutritious produce was and still is not always an option for my family. I want healthy foods to always be an option for members of my community so no one has to starve and worry about when their next meal is.