Northwest Green Building Slam + Summit!

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.