Let's fill this island with community gardens!
Campaigns:Help Cyprus find its direction while bringing your ideas to life!
Proposal code: Pusula / Ππούσουλας-2020-03-87
'No man is an island'. This is an opportunity to learn how to grow your own food, eat and share its legacy with your community.
‘No man is an island'.
The recent coronavirus outbreak is teaching us the importance of working collaboratively and in solidarity with others for the wellbeing of the community, and this cannot be undermined. As such, we are hopeful that there will be brighter days, and we believe that in order to facilitate this shift, we need to re-design the very systems that pervade us. Moving on from capitalist driven, individualistic and unhealthy ways of living, to collective, healthy, self-sufficient and resilient communities where citizens care for the commons as well as their own lives.
Let's fill this island with community gardens!
This is an opportunity to learn how to grow your own food, eat and share its legacy with your community.
The idea is inspired by an important element found in the heritage of Cyprus. As a primarily agricultural society, Cyprus used to be based on a sharing economy and on living simply. By encouraging the growth of community gardens across Cyprus, we are essentially reviving some of the values that are close to home.
This concept is further inspired by the resurgence of community gardens in different parts of the world, which are used to encourage healthy living, generate social capital, boost social interaction, collaboration and self-sufficiency amongst (neighborhoods and) communities at large. Greener neighborhoods, especially those with green common areas, encourage social bonding between neighbors and enabling such settings to blossom (Flora, Kreuger & Wolf, 2014).
What is more, community gardens offer a wonderful opportunity to reverse some of the negative connotations found in antagonistic spaces. Imagine replacing former landmines in Cyprus with vegetable havens, or having community gardens bloom across the buffer zone, in alleyways, parks and in forgotten spaces island-wide.
Upon implementation, the possibilities for the sustainability of this project are endless. From cooperatives to workshops, to community gatherings and cross-cultural fiestas, this initiative has the capacity to bring people together, empowering local communities and strengthening feelings of resilience.
COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT
We want to engage communities on a micro and micro scale:
In each selected neighborhood, neighbors will be encouraged to participate (as informal contributors) to support and join the cause, and to ensure the community gardens’ usage and sustainability. This is based on the rationale that nearby residents will have direct benefits from improving aspects of their community, and will thus develop their capacities to identify opportunities as to how to develop facets of each garden, eventually becoming direct beneficiaries of whatever they will reap.
In parallel with the initial inductions offered by selected professionals, we propose an intergenerational exchange program, which will make use of the know-how of retired men and women, who will have the time and skills to teach younger community members how to grow their own food and sustain the community gardens, through a collective approach.
SHORT TERM MEASURES
What needs to happen first:
- Plots of land granted by municipalities and / private owners and UNFICYP wherever applicable.
- Access to seeds etc.
- Design & infrastructure for shaping gardens, as well as watering and maintaining them.
- Sheds to provide shade.
- Tools for gardening.
- Pilot implementation, leading to the creation of a handbook for every neighborhood.
LONG TERM MEASURES
What needs to happen once the gardens become a reality:
- Inductions and training programs through classes on how to grow your own food and capacity building for communities’ self-management.
- Implementation of rota systems to enable maintenance of the garden, with small, financial contributions for the time given by stakeholders.
- Inviting secondary stakeholders such as Universities to join as partners, particularly from courses that are directly aligned with the project.
- Local self-managed committees to control whether neighbors are taking care of the gardens as well as to provide suggestions for seasonal planting.
- Policy making + urban studies for available spaces in every neighbourhood.
- A collaborative spirit :)
RESOURCES
Wolf, K.L., S. Kreuger, and K. Flora. 2014. Place Attachment and Meaning - A Literature Review. In: Green Cities: Good Health (www.greenhealth.washington.edu). College of the Environment: University of Washington.
https://depts.washington.edu/hhwb/Thm_WorkLearn.html
Read chapter: THE BENEFITS OF URBAN GREEN SPACES FOR SOCIAL COHESION IN POST-CONFLICT CONTEXTS
https://www.redalyc.org/jatsRepo/675/67557558005/html/index.html
EXAMPLES of community gardens here:
https://littleveggiepatchco.com.au/pages/pop-up-patch
https://www.cultivatingcommunity.org.au/
http://www.urbantactics.org/projects/ecobox/ecobox.html