Community Food System Partnership

Community Food System Partnership

The goal of the Community Food System project is to provide a sustainable urban/suburban farming center in Boston’s Metrowest that will be partially staffed by developmentally challenged children and adults from a local respite center.

Part of our founding mandate is to “enhance access to public lands and promote the integration of public lands into living communities, utilize undeveloped urban land for spatial definition of urban areas and contain the threat of urban and suburban sprawl”. Consistent with this mandate, we intend to locate a promising redevelopment site which may be a blighted parcel, one to four acres in size, in a neglected urbanized area. We plan to develop it into a year-round sustainable producer of agricultural products for local consumption. The program would employ respite center clients as well as volunteers from the community, with particular emphasis on students from local schools.  Produce will be sold to local markets and restaurants, and distributed throughout the community.

With this project we intend to:

1)     Enhance community access to public lands and promote the integration of public lands into living communities.

2)     Provide vocational and leadership opportunities for developmentally challenged children and adults.

3)     Create sustainable food source for the community.

4)     Promote integration of community resources, especially by providing local schools with a community garden space that can be integrated into science, health and social studies curricula.

5)     Employ respite center clients as well as volunteers from the community, with particular emphasis on students from local schools.

The Community Food System Program will preserve and revitalize important green space in an urban/suburban environment, and will provide an opportunity for developmentally disabled adults and children to gain valuable employment and leadership skills. The project will also make its farm site available for local schools, to enhance earth science and place-based education curricula. Finally, we hope it will also help strengthen connections between diverse members of the community and their natural environment.