Continuing to organize a vibrant local food system in Seguin, Texas
Thanks in large part to the current garden manager and the person who served as my supervisor for this apprenticeship, Ricardo Guerra, production out at the community garden continues to be strong. I participated the most I have to date in the everyday operation of the garden and I am so thankful of the lessons I have learned. In addition, participation by the community seems to have increased as showcased by the frequent visitors and willingness of many to donate time to weed as well as seed to plant future gardens.
In addition, in an effort of sustainable community development, Ricardo and myself were able to acquire the rights to 17 greenhouses, which will be both sold for the sake of raising funds to continue the partnership with OC but some of these will also be donated to efforts of agriculture and food production education. We are very excited about using these greenhouses as an educational tool to engage more youth with the food system.
Finally, I am hopeful that meetings to start organizing the various community garden efforts in Seguin will be successful in creating a working network between the gardens so that food access in Seguin through the use of community gardens. With about 7 organized gardens in Seguin, and hopefully more to come very soon, I hope this efforts continues to get stronger.
Finding funds to further the initiative of improving health in our community
In October, the LULAC Foundation was awarded a $5000 MARS Healthy Community Program grant to go towards the implementation of community health programs for a 6 month period which started in November. Only 5 of these grants were granted by the National LULAC Institute to local LULAC chapters around the United States. Something of note, Seguin is the smallest recipient city out of the five.
Here is a link for more information regarding the grant.
http://lulac.org/programs/health/mars_healthy_communities/
Here is the press release written by OC Board member, Alphonso Rincón regarding
LULAC682HealthGrantPresRel 120614
Travelling throughout the Ogallala Region and interacting directly with Ogallala Commons leadership and community partners.
This trip, which took over the month of October, was documented and written about in the blog posted here. Please check it out!!
https://ogallalacommons.org/traveling-account-community-assets-action/
https://ogallalacommons.org/traveling-account-community-assets-action-pt-2/
Supervisor/apprentice relationship
Finally, I would like to express much gratitude to Ricardo Guerra, who served as my supervisor for this apprenticeship. Our work together was very collaborative in nature however Ricardo also gave me a lot of freedom in accomplishing my goals. This made for a great mix of good teamwork and opportunities for individual creativity and initiative in getting things done. Seeing each other practically every day for the last four months, this close knit collaboration was a great example of great leadership cultivating great results by the understudy.
