Programs

Educate

Our educational program, at Oakland schools, on our roof, and at community work parties and low-cost educational workshops at various sites around the East Bay, gives community residents the chance to participate in each implementation phase of our gardening projects. This kind of experiential learning is incredibly empowering. As community members cooperate to turn school grounds and people's homes into beautiful and productive edible landscapes, and transform empty lots into ecological training sites, nurseries, and community gardens, Planting Justice help produce capable, confident, and inspired urban farmers and permaculture designers.

explore prep fall planting

(6th grade students planting lettuce, celery, peas, and strawberries at Explore College Preparatory School)

 

We take as many opportunities as we can to provide hands-on training to local youth and other residents in urban gardening, bio-intensive organic food production, and urban Permaculture techniques. Some of the topics that we cover during these community work parties and educational workshops are Urban Permaculture Design; raising chickens, ducks, fish, and rabbits for protein; designing and implementing food forests; using beneficial micro-organisms to increase organic harvests; composting methods; water harvesting and...

Build Urban Food Forests

Our urban food forest program produces low-cost, organic, nutritious food in communities that structurally have little access to it.  At schools, people's homes, empty lots, and spiritual centers, we bring community members together in action to create sustainable, replicable gardens that demonstrate how it
is possible to grow a complete nutritional diet safely and profitably
in an urban environment.  We can then utilize these spaces as educational centers that serve as living classrooms for community members to practice Urban Permaculture and bio-intensive gardening techniques, and empower themselves with the knowledge and inspiration to continue growing food for themselves, their families, and community members.

WYSE crew planting fava beans at Explore Prep

(WYSE crew planting fava beans as cover crop under young fruit trees at Explore College Prep food forest)

 

Planting Justice is currently seeking new sites to transform into high-yield food forests using Permaculture design techniques. Contact us if you would like to collaborate!

 

 

Create Green Jobs

Too often, the "green jobs" conversation is narrowly limited to highly industrial sectors that demand millions and millions of dollars in capital input, inaccessible to a working class person wanting to start a "green" business. The dominant focus is on high-tech “clean energy” sectors, and little attention is paid to the minerals that must be mined and the waste that is generated when these products reach the end of their relatively short life cycle. Renerable energy is a big step in the right direction, but it can and should be done sustainably while efforts are made to reduce our energy consumption. And while industrial energy projects dominate the green jobs discourse and receive all the federal funds, food is left out of the discussion.

 

Sustainable agriculture and organic and diverse urban food production hold the key to local economic revitalization and job creation, while drastically reducing our society's energy consumption that sends food thousands of miles from farmer to plate. Planting Justice will provide a different model for creating green jobs in our neighborhoods, one that connects food justice with economic justice and can be replicated anywhere with little capital input. This can and should be done by anyone, in every U.S. city. All you need is a people, seeds, sun, water, some space, and a little guidance and inspiration.

 

Our green jobs program will provide dignified jobs to disenfranchised urban...

Organize

A vibrant community outreach program, door by door and block by block, can initiate the broad community participation and support we need to have a big impact.  Not only can we increase awareness of the importance of community food projects in various neighborhoods and organize teams of volunteers, but we can also decentralize the fundraising sources that support community gardens in low-income neighborhoods and train and hire a new generation of local grassroots organizers!

 

picture of canvassers