Hamline Midway Coalition's Local Foods Working Group voted in November 2011 to partner with Gardening Matters to establish a Local Food Resource Hub in the neighborhood. Local Food Resource Hubs are locally-based partnerships of individuals, neighborhood organizations, and local businesses who support residents to grow their own fresh produce, helping to ensure greater food security and healthy food access. Local Food Resource Hubs are democratic organizations that are community member inspired, driven, and organized. The success of the program depends largely on community support and donations of time, money and resources.
The concept of resource hubs grew out of Detroit and has now spread to many places across the nation. Gardening Matters helped establish the first three hubs in the Twin Cities in 2010 in Minneapolis. The first year's network of hubs had five main focus areas:
- Serve as local points of distribution for physical resources
- Provide physical space for education classes
- Focus on building leadership capacity at the community level
- Develop a community network of gardeners and urban farmers that are able to support one another
- Build community connections
Last year with the help of Gardening Matters, individual hubs organized two spring distributions of seeds and plant starts to their members, offered free gardening workshops, and organized tool lending libraries. The Hamline Midway Local Foods Working Group hopes to follow in these footsteps while encouraging new ideas and energy from community members. According to Gardening Matters, "Resource hubs are local partnership networks helping gardeners get the education and tools they need to grow food successfully. These Local Food Resource Hubs are intended to support residents growing their own fresh produce in their backyards, front yards or community gardens. There is evidence that cities of the future will need to grow more of their own food to ensure food security. Resource hubs can lead to more gardeners becoming urban farmers, earning money by growing food for their neighbors, restaurants and farmers markets. They are an important economic development strategy that also uniquely benefits the health of people in our city by increasing overall access to more and healthier food." Hamline Midway's Local Foods Working Group plans to have a kick-off event in late January to mark the exciting beginning of this community resource. For more information about Local Food Resource Hubs or about becoming a individual or organizational member, contact us.
