Green House in Full Effect

The Garden District's green house is up and running. Thanks and praises to everyone who lent a hand. 

BLESS

Luke 12:48

We have started construction on our first greenhouse. The greenhouse will allow us to maximize our yield in the winter months and to increase our profitability.

Pictured above is Walter and Kelly, two neighbors and workers in the garden. Walter is one of the garden founders and has been a constant source of inspiration,wisdom, and enthusiasm. Kelly is a lively neighbor, always smiling and helpful. Maximum respect to everyone who has lent a helping hand!

BLESS

LUKE 12:48

Non-Profits: A Successful Model for Meaningful Change? Part 2

     Non-profits make community activism too easy and breed waste, laziness, hypocrisy and ineffectiveness. To illustrate this point we will use an example from our wonderful city, New Orleans. The Holleygrove Market and Farm (HMF) operates in a similar fashion to most “successful” non-profits. In other words, they purport to serve the community and even claim to have vast community support when in actuality they impose their external views and values on a non-receptive population. The HMF portrays itself as an established and cherished part of the Holleygrove neighborhood. It describes itself as follows:

“Through our twice weekly produce market, community gardens, and mentor farmers we are able to provide residents with an affordable option for fresh, local produce as well as resources and space to cultivate their knowledge of growing healthy food.”

The reality is starkly different. It would be hard to imagine how after three plus years, HMF could be any more divorced from its community. As a former resident of Holleygrove and a former volunteer at HMF I feel confident in saying that their self-description is inaccurate, and their actions ineffective. On market days, residents of Holleygrove are conspicuously absent and instead there are a multitude of Mid-City, Carrolton, Fontainebleau, and Garden District residents ready and willing to pay the prices that deter neighborhood residents. Holleygrove residents are also virtually non-existent among the massive amounts of volunteers that consist primarily of Tulane and Loyola students. On the HMF homepage, the “What’s New” section reads as follows:

“11/12 Weekly produce box, 11/12 New recipee: Green Goddess Dressing, 11/12 New recipe: Tahini Salad Dressing, 11/12 New recipe: Stir fry, 11/11 Yoga at the Market”.

Instead of offering recipes, products, and activities that the community is familiar with and can afford, HMF offers Tahini dressing and yoga. This is a perfect example of HMF’s disregard for the existing cultural and economic reality of the community as well as HMF imposing its cultural values and proclivities. In addition, when one leaves the immediate vicinity of HMF very few residents know what HMF actually is or does and some have never even heard of it, and all this despite the amazingly central location next to one of the major parks in Holleygrove. Despite all of this, HMF gets wonderful press and is very well regarded among the upper-middle class liberal community. HMMMMMM….

None of this is to discredit or take away from the dedicated, well-intentioned employees and members of HMF. Rather, the purpose is to illustrate the real world manifestations of a typical non-profit model. Non-profits are expected and encouraged to seek massive grants and donations. This huge influx of money - in addition to the other problems it causes – promotes waste, laziness, hypocrisy and ineffectiveness. In order to build a successful, long-term community organization, the COMMUNITY needs to be the foundation! The community cannot merely be extended token participation but must be the FOUNDATION! This takes hard work. Work in the community means finding out what the community wants and how it wants to achieve those ends. Community work necessitates massive amounts of human interaction. Human interaction cannot be boiled down – as it so often is by non-profits – to going door to door or having friendly conversations. Community work is only truly meaningful when it ceases to be work, when it becomes a way of life. In order for this to happen, one must live in a community and share in the joy, sadness, problems, and solutions of that community. This human element is indispensible and must form the foundation of any organization if it is to meaningfully impact a community.

It is precisely this human element that HMF and other non-profits avoid. We are not saying that skipping this crucial step is a conscious diabolical decision of any group or individual. That is not the point of this critique. Rather, we are saying that the accepted non-profit model promotes the avoidance of a human foundation and replaces it with an ECONOMIC foundation. With massive amounts of money at their fingertips - from grants, donations, and tax deductions - non-profits waste massive amounts of materials, money, and labor. Instead of being resourceful and plugging into the community for free, cheap, unused materials and labor, non-profits use their money to buy the newest, nicest, shiniest materials. Although the result may be a nice shiny, state-of-the-art building – see HMF – it also will have wasted materials, money and labor that could have been used much more efficiently, and had more of a benefit on the community. For example, currently HMF uses a combination of buying brand new, expensive, superfluous equipment and using massive amounts of volunteer labor. If instead they were to be more resourceful – i.e. using materials already in there community – they could be more sustainable while simultaneously saving enough money to employ community members – instead of external volunteers – in meaningful work.

Laziness may not be the right word. We are sure that the employees are very hardworking individuals. However, as mentioned above, the accepted non-profit model is extremely conducive to circumventing the process of becoming one with the community. This process is the most important part of any truly successful community organization because it creates a solid foundation of support and legitimacy. It is also the most labor intensive, risky, time-consuming step. The combination of skipping this step and making up for it with money is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible. Throwing money at problems devalues hard work, communion and dissolves community bonds by making things easy. As a result, community members are denied agency and a sense of meaningful participation in the project. This shiny veneer and hollow core is precisely why many non-profits - although not well respected, utilized or even known in the communities in which they are located - are still venerated and hailed as a success by the media and upper-middle class.

The inevitable result of following this economic model is a non-profit which professes one thing, but the reality is completely different. This discrepancy between rhetoric and action is the definition of hypocrisy.

BLESS

LUKE 12:48

Wheels!

We finally got a truck!! We saved up and and got a beautiful 1992 Ford F-150, Big Red. She is spacious, smooth, rides very well and above all she's legal!! Registered and insured. Suck on that NOPD! 

Big Red has already been a HUGE help, allowing us to haul manure, dirt and materials. Also, having a truck means we no longer have to hit up friends to use theirs (much respect to Macon "the Garden Guy" Fry and Coach Perez!!).

BLESS

LUKE 12:48