Veggielution Community Farm
Veggielution is a non-profit community farm that grows farm products organically while supplying the output to the people with hunger, volunteers and the community. The farm seeks to create a sustainable food system for the community.
The farm carries out its activity of a 1-acre piece of land that is located at Emma Prusch Park in San Jose, California. The workers on the farm are mainly volunteers, who work during weekdays. Others are the youth programs, sliding scale farmstands and the community workshop that gives the people in the community to get their hands dirty as they vegetables. The community service project began by farming on a 1/6 of an acre that they produced 1700 pounds of food during the first year. The community farm has been able to expand rapidly for the past three years.
Veggielution has had impact on the community and volunteer people too with some core values that they provide such as build community, embrace diversity, empower young, and create a sustainable food system (Veggielution para 1).The engagement of the community farm with the community is what defines their mission, which is “To empower youth and adults from diverse backgrounds to create a sustainable food system in San Jose.” The farm engages the community by providing access to healthy and local food, creating youth leadership opportunities, and developing creative solutions to social and environmental justice issues. The community farm is driven by several values that include youth empowerment, diversity, creation of food sustainability and community building (Veggielution para 2).Vegiellution is sponsored financially by the William James Association being assisted by donations from Kaiser Permanent, and the relationship with partners San Jose city Parks department, funders, local universities, Fundraiser Dinner team and other organization sin the community. Due to increased productivity, the farm was able to produce 3100 pounds of food last year.
Some of the food was donated to the Martha’s kitchen, a soup kitchen while other portions of the food were sold at the farm and the park.Family daily is a program of the Veggielution where one can bring a child and family to explore and have fun. The activity is usually conducted every second Saturday of the month from 11:00-12:15. Some of the interesting activities that families and children get involve din such days include bug catching, art projects, leaf printing, compost exploration, seed planting, and story time (Veggielution para 2). I volunteered to work with Veggielution since September and found it interesting. Volunteering for the first time to the farm led me to exchange ideas with other students.
I felt satisfied of doing well not only with myself but also with what I was doing for the community. We picked heirloom tomatoes using our bear hand and packed them. On my second visit to the farm in the same month, we picked yellow tomatoes, which were very sweet and good for salad. Later, we assessed the plants by ensuring that the plants were not in the ground. We also picked weeds.
As we came close to the end of my second day volunteering, I realized that my public speaking skills were improving due to the ability to communicate with other people.During my third visit to the farm on October 23, 2010, I got involved in cleaning the area that had many weeds. In the other two subsequent and last visits, I also got involved in various important activities on the farm. Despite the visits, I learnt that volunteering has many benefits than I had thought. For instance, I learnt to be patient especially with activities that take time such as education and farming activities. Teamwork is also important for the success of a project.
While working as a team with a common goal, I realized that you could achieve a lot especially when working for a good cause such as donating food to the needy.Donating my time for a good cause was very important, and it made me realize that we should be thankful for all thing that we have for granted. In addition, volunteering help a lot people to develop the social skill and we share opinion about our community that we should be thankful. The most important thing is that I had a lot fun working and learning new things. It is our moral obligation to contribute in community and we own to the community that provide for us too.
we should get involve in the community not only because it is our moral obligation because the best volunteer experiences benefit both the volunteer and the organization, and the organization benefit other people that are in need such soup Martha’s Kitchen that provide food for people that do not have food to eat.
