project leader
Lynne Y
location
477 Windsor Street SW
(22 Atlanta neighborhoods including: Grove Park, Howell Station, Knight Park, Mozley Park, Washington Park, Ashview Heights, Vine City, English Avenue, Bankhead, Hunter Hills, Westview, West End, Adair Park, Mechanicsville, Peoplestown and Pittsburgh)
latest update rss
Thank you!

the project

Agribusiness and its affiliated large-scale food corporations control our modern food system.  We are looking to replace this unsustainable system which diverts money out of local economies and dumps unhealthy food into our communities with an approach we call the Food Commons. This model improves access to nutritious foods while developing local business enterprises. Three core elements (Trust, Hub, and Fund) work together to ensure that local foodshed-based businesses can be successful and beneficial to our neighborhood.

  • Food Trust - an organization that will acquire and steward critical foodshed assets, particularly land assets
  • Food Hubs - a locally owned, cooperatively integrated business enterprises that build and manage foodshed-based physical infrastructure
  • Food Fund - a community-owned financial institution that provides capital and financial services to foodshed enterprises.

We have designated a twenty-neighborhood area of Southwest Atlanta, the "Fertile Crescent," as the prototype for the Food Commons Atlanta model. This community is coping with devastation born from decades of systematic disregard from outside entities. The Food Commons reverses this trend and will allow this traumatized community to become a model for food sovereignty. 

When all elements are operating, the Commons will:

  • Improve access of local Atlanta residents to healthy foods,
  • Create and preserve green space for urban gardens and farms
  • Provide employment and self-employment opportunities within the “Fertile Crescent”
  • Provide would-be growers with the tools (training, access to funding, land and tools) that they need to be successful.

the steps

A coalition of community volunteers and non-profit community based organizations has been meeting since November to develop the Food Hub, Fund and Trust components of the Commons but our work is fragmented. It is not easy to create three new organizations while only meeting together once a month!

We want to get together to develop an action plan for our path forward for the next year. This IOBY project will fund costs for the meeting venue, food, and facilitators for our day and a half workshop. The workshop is scheduled to occur at the end of September.  We anticipate that a host of IOBY-fundable projects will be spearheaded through this initial planning activity.

why we're doing it

The USDA has designated over half of the Fertile Crescent community in southwest Atlanta as a food desert.  Our goal is to improve our access to fresh, local food and create economic opportunities.  This is effectively done by utilizing assets already present within the community. 

Local food production is thriving in southeast Atlanta.  There are approximately 15 community gardens, 5 market gardens and around 10 non-profit and for-profit urban farms within  the Fertile Crescent and yet there are still a host of vacant and underutilized properties where food could be grown.  The area is also home to a number of warehouses as well as other food production and processing infrastructure that could be repurposed as neighborhood-scaled “food hubs.” 

Our Food Commons initiative will identify, connect and leverage these assets to build a foundation of a new local food economy in Atlanta.  Many organizations and individuals have expressed interest in this initiative.  Before we can move forward however, we first must solidify our organization.  Funding the “Fertile Crescent 2013 Summer Retreat of Food Commons Atlanta" project through your tax-deductable contribution is the first step of this process.

                       

budget

Please note that all donations are Tax-Deductible

$  700 - Retreat facilitator (Building a Local Economy)



RAISED = $820
ioby Platform Fee  waived
3rd Party Credit Card Processing Fee (3%) $24
TOTAL TO DISBURSE = $796

 

updates

Thank you!

Thank you!

Thanks again for your generous support!  You may notice that we've adjusted our budget for this project. Our original budget was 

$1,500 - Retreat facilitator (Governance & Community Engagement)

$  700 - Retreat facilitator (Building a Local Economy)

$  800 - Venue rental @$50.00 per hour for 16 hours

$  100 - Venue cleaning fee

$  600 - Venue AV cost @ $35.00 per hour for 16 hours

$1,300 - Food cost @$20.00 per person for 65 persons (for 2 days, continental brkfst, lunch)

$  300  - Event program

$2,000 - General facilitation & logistical support

$7300 Subtotal

This still reflects the overall budget for the retreat as a whole.  We were able to fund this effort through the generous support of our efforts through ioby and a number of other sources. We did hold the retreat on September 20th and 21st.  A few photographs from the Friday session are provided below. 

We are planning to close out this effort on Friday the 18th, so letting your friends and social networks know about our campaign one last time through email, Facebook, Google+ and Twitter will help us close out this project successfully. Thank you again for all you have done to help us support urban farming in Atlanta!

 

Thank you!

Thank you everyone for all of your support so far. We are about at the halfway point of the campaign but far short of half way to our goal.

Would you consider letting your friends and social networks know about our campaign through email, Facebook, Google + and Twitter? Thank you again for your efforts which will help us increase local Atlanta residents' access to healthy foods!

photos

This is where photos will go once we build flickr integration

donors

  • Sean R.
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  • Kwabena N.
  • Pamela V.
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  • James C.
  • Barbara M M.
  • Gil F.
  • Earl P.
  • Melanie W.
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  • Michael M.
  • Jett H.
  • L Y.
  • Jennifer K.
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  • Stephanie R.