Inmates Plant Seeds for Community
On October 12th, in the improbable surroundings of a Philadelphia prison, members of the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society, the Philadelphia Prision System, and representatives of regional food cupboard distribution agency Self-Help and Resource Exchange (SHARE), met to celebrate a successful first year of their innovative pilot project, City Harvest.
The City Harvest Project connects an extensive and diverse network of people and organizations. Inmates in the prison system’s jobs training program nurture vegetable seeds to seedlings in the newly refurbished prison greenhouse and the “Roots to Reentry Garden”. Gardeners from 21 Philadelphia community gardesn take delivery of the seedlings, transplanting and growing them until harvest. SHARE food bank volunteers then transport the fresh produce to locations in the community for distribution. The program was funded by a grant from the Albert M. Greenfield Foundation.
Food insecurity impacts many area households. According to the 2004 Southeastern Pennsylvania Household Health Survey, more than 120,000 families in Philadelphia rely on food distribution services like those provided by SHARE. In its first year, City Harvest delivered 5,300 pounds of fresh, locally grown produce to the community. The program connected more than 700 people in a common effort that, in addition to providing nutritious, locally grown vegetables to food cupboards, helped teach useful trade skills to inmates, and gave community gardeners the chance to grow food for those in need in their own communities. Inmates grow plants in time for spring planting, but also use prison facilities to deliver seedlings to community gardeners in August, effectively extending the growing season for local vegetables by months. The program hosted 50 events throughout the year, including workshops and tastings, which spread the word about the value of organic gardening and good nutrition.
Inmate Thomas Maiden has learned a lot through the program, “I never thought I’d be out in the dirt, planting seeds. I planted a bed when I first started, and now I go back and I see how everything’s growing. And it amazes me. Hey, I did that. I didn’t think I could do that.”
DUTV Program Manager and community gardener Deborah Rudman documented the City Harvest program throughout the year. “Health is a real problem in our country directly related to our eating. To get connected more locally is also important. But the most important story is what’s happening behind these prison walls in a positive way. I want to see a lot of things change in the world, and one of those things is the connection between poverty and imprisonment. People really are getting better nutrition through this, are getting rehabilitation through this, are connecting with communities where they came from and may return to. I wanted to be a part of it and tell the story.”
All City Harvest partners look forward to expanding the program into the future, taking it to more community gardeners and teaching inmates more sophisticated techniques such as budding, grafting, and hardscaping. Philadelphia Prison System Commissioner Leon King II hopes to involve local landscaping businesses in the program to help provide job placement for the inmates who’ve gone through the training. “We want to provide some sort of foundation so that people can see that they don’t have to leave here and go back and continue to do what caused them to get here in the first place,” he said.
“You hear a lot about crime, public safety and violence,” King said, “and everybody wants to get involved to effect that problem. And everybody in Harrisburg wants to see how many police they can hire, how many sentences they can increase. They think that’s the key to fighting violence and crime in the city, and there may be some portion of that that’s relevant. But the part they miss is that programs like this are just as vital to public safety as 10,000 more police officers.”
As Pennsylvania Horticultural Society President Jane Pepper said, “Look how much we can do together when we get together!”
Check out this clip from Deborah Rudman’s documentary of City Harvest. CityHarvest
Features, Community, ‘City Harvest’ Grows Community, community gardens, food, PhiladelphiaGreen City Journal article by Caryn Hunt about the Pennsylvania Horticultural Society’s City Harvest program, in which prisoners grow seedlings for delivery to Philadelphia community gardeners, which becomes produce for local food cupboards.
2006-10-13 11:59:41
