Earth Justice Now!: Building Intersectional Community Spaces
UW Kane Hall - Seattle
1:30 pm, Room 220 - Access and Equity
http://www.northwestgreen.org/single-post/2018/10/06/Earth-Justice-Now-Building-Intersectional-Community-Spaces

Tahmina Martelly, World Relief Fund 
Kyla Rynard, Alleycat Acres 
Jake Harris, Stone Soup Gardens (moderator)

Join Kyla Rudnik of Alleycat Acres, Tahmina Martelly of World Relief Seattle and Jake Harris of Stone Soup Gardens to learn about two community development projects focused on Social Justice and Food Access.

Wetmore Community Farm:

Wetmore Ave was a dead end S-DOT street covered in knotweed that Alleycat Acres opened up and developed into a community farm and food forest. Wetmore Community Farm now is a food hub of an elementary school, the food bank, low income senior housing and a neighborhood in the rapidly changing Rainier Valley.

Paradise Parking Plots:

A recently de-paved church parking lot in Kent is being transformed by World Relief Seattle into a habitat space, a GSI demonstration site and a welcoming community farm for over 50 refugee families.  

Both projects had ribbon cuttings this year, and both projects are taking a whole systems approach to their development.

Learning Objectives:

• Understand how two amazing organizations are achieving their goals of creating spaces that engage currently marginalized communities while bettering the planet.
• Recognize the challenges and successes each organization had in engaging the community and making these projects real for them.
• Understand the challenges and successes around developing two neglected spaces: through funding, permitting, networking, and construction.
• Understand and feel empowered to incorporate equity, justice and whole systems thinking for planning, implementation and operation of public spaces into their own projects.

ALLEYCAT ACRES CELEBRATES COMMUNITY FARM AT FALL FESTIVAL
​by Carolyn Bick
October 18, 20218
Link to article

Beneath a tent along the little lane at the back of South Estelle Street, children painted freshly picked pumpkins, as others eagerly fed and petted chickens in a mobile coop a few feet away. Though neither the coop nor the tent were permanent, greenery surrounding the was: the lane is the site of Wetmore Community Farm, and Saturday saw the farm’s official grand opening.

Run by Alleycat Acres, the free community farm has been open since 2015, but, as Farm Coordinator and Program Director Kyla Rudnick explained, this year marked the end of any major projects on or clearing of the land.

The City of Seattle grant-funded farm originally opened, because a family who lived next door was tired of seeing the derelict land and got in contact with the organization.

“We started holding community meetings in the neighborhood to see if people were interested in a community garden, and what they wanted to do with the space and went from there,” Rudnick said. “We’ve been holding events here for about three years. … Now, we just have some more planting to do, and start maintaining the site.”

The farm is run in partnership with the Rainier Valley Food Bank, Senior Housing Assistance Group, the Downtown Emergency Service Center, and Stone Soup Gardens. In the years to come, Rudnick said they hope to get more of the community itself involved. Having the space serve as a community garden is important, she said, because there isn’t any green space like it in the immediate area. While that isn’t necessarily a problem for younger people, it can be a problem for seniors.

“We have a lot of senior citizens who live in the neighborhood, so having that green space where they can walk is really important,” Rudnick said. “Of course, all the food that we grow here is going directly to neighbors. … There are grocery stores around here, but having free, fresh produce is, of course, a boon to any neighborhood, and especially here, where we have such a dense neighborhood.”

Garden neighbor Plekeo Douangdara said she and her husband enjoy gardening, and that she walks around the community garden “all the time.” She’s been gardening for 30 years, she said, and is excited to contribute seeds and plants to the space.

“I have a lot of seeds, like Asian corn, Asian pumpkin, eggplants,” Douangdara said. “She said, ‘Okay, you can plant!’ … Very cool. Before, nobody wanted to go in here … but this year and last year is better.”