The landscape of Denver鈥檚 Westwood neighborhood is changing. Squash, tomatoes, chiles, spinach, and melons are sprouting up in backyards. Family members are tending to their gardens and harvesting their own fresh food. And community members are working side-by-side to help transform their neighborhood from its designation as a 鈥渇ood desert鈥濃�攖he United States Department of Agriculture鈥檚 term to classify densely populated, low-income areas that lack easy access to healthy food鈥攖o a model of urban sustainability.
The shift is the result of the coordinated efforts of community organizations and the local nonprofit Re:Vision International and its focus on community-led projects in Westwood.
As part of the project Learning in the Food Movement, researchers and graduate students from the 麻豆影院 are collaborating with these community groups around two goals: first, to study how food systems in food-insecure neighborhoods fulfill community needs; and second, to help increase local residents鈥� opportunities to leverage educational resources.
Developing Denver鈥檚 food system is a complex issue involving many stakeholders, so the project is necessarily interdisciplinary. Learning in the Food Movement was co-created by Susan Jurow and Kevin O鈥機onnor, both professors in the CU 麻豆影院 School of Education, and also involves Bernard Amadei from the and Richard Wobbekind from the . The project is funded by a CU聽麻豆影院 Outreach Award, WISE (Women Investing in the School of Education), and the Denver Seeds Initiative.
鈥淲e are interested in food politics and community organization,鈥� O鈥機onnor said. 鈥淎t the same time, we want to rethink learning as more than just the acquisition of standardized forms of knowledge. Traditional kinds of thinking have too often led to the reproduction of the status quo. We want instead to pay attention to people who are working to organize alternative futures and their part in those alternative futures.
鈥淩e:Vision鈥檚 work offered a perfect opportunity to bring these different interests together.鈥�
The project hinges on Re:Vision co-founders Eric Kornacki and Joseph Teipel鈥檚 use of a 辫谤辞尘辞迟辞谤补听model, which they developed to initiate backyard gardening to enhance Westwood鈥檚 food system. The model relies on neighborhood residents, called promotoras, who act as liaisons between their community social networks and organizations that promote community change. Together, Westwood families and promotoras design gardens that flourish in small, often non-ideal spaces. They transport compost to backyards, set up automated watering systems, and teach residents to weed vigilantly.
鈥淭丑别 promotoras are the lynchpin. They are the community leaders. They are the experts for what their community needs,鈥� said Jurow. 鈥淥ur goal is to understand what community members value instead of pushing initiatives that we think are useful.鈥�
Initial studies revealed the promotoras鈥� desires to learn how to become better community organizers, so CU聽麻豆影院 researchers are conducting train-the- trainer-style workshops. Working closely with Re:Vision, CU聽麻豆影院 business students helped develop an economically viable food distribution plan and engineering students assisted in the creation of potentially useful products, such as a low-cost solar heating panel that currently is being tested at the Re:Vision office.
鈥淭his project is a great opportunity to look at how people influence community development,鈥� Jurow said. 鈥淭丑别 promotoras could be doing a lot of other things, but they are doing this because they care about their neighbors. As a result, they are bringing so many more healthy vegetables into their community.鈥�
What began with just seven families in 2009 has grown to 200 backyard-garden participants. As Re:Vision鈥檚 efforts and other initiatives continue to blossom, Learning in the Food Movement documents how researchers and community organizers are learning with and from one another and in the process are producing new futures for the Westwood neighborhood.
鈥淭his project is not just about food,鈥� Jurow said. 鈥淲e see it as a way to challenge researchers to think about learning differently.鈥�
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Related Faculty: Susan Jurow, Kevin O'Connor, Sam Severance