Mission

The Hattie Carthan community garden/market seeks to enhance the quality of life in the Bedford Stuyvesant Central Brooklyn area by:

•Preserving Brooklyns agricultural heritage

•Increasing access to fresh local food for Central Brooklyn residents

•Providing a quality market and entrepreneurial opportunities for a variety of locally grown and value added farm products and commodities directly to the customer.

•Providing opportunities for neighborhood youth to work and learn about food, entrepreneurship and place making in communities.

•Providing opportunities for farmers and people from outside communities to deal directly with each other and learn from one another.

•Providing a quality market which provides fresh locally grown food to community residents.

•Fostering local advocacy and encouraging collaborations between residents, elected officials, community organizations, schools, local businesses, faith-based and other institutions.

•Providing a safe space for social gatherings, healthy food education and food and farm justice activities.

•Offering community programs which sustain community health, good nutrition, energy, human dignity, and offer the opportunity for humans to meet their full potential.

Our History

Over two decades of advocacy efforts in Central Brooklyn

The Hattie Carthan garden was formed in 1991 as a place where humans can expand their knowledge of plants and grow fresh food in Brooklyn. The garden has been a place that is multigenerational and multicultural for over two decades in Bed Stuy Brooklyn. We aim to create an atmosphere of collective awareness, respect and responsibility built on the resources of our community.

The garden and market resides on 2.076 acres of land and has bearing fruit trees, a functioning hoophouse, a chicken coop, a functioning community composting system and seasonal market that operates from July to November.

The Hattie Carthan community garden has advocacy and changemaking at its core. The garden is named after Bedford Stuyvesant community advocate/icon Hattie Carthan who was instrumental in the planting of over fifteen hundred trees in Bedford Stuyvesant and the creation of the Magnolia tree and Earth center who were the original guardians of the community garden. Under the leadership of Ms. Hattie Carthan, the founder of MTEC, a Green Movement comprised of African Americans and Caribbeans began. Ms Carthans goal was to develop the skills and attitudes among Bedford-Stuyvesant residents of all ages that will foster urban beautification, environmental awareness and develop human potential.

Our garden currently sits on what was the original site of St Augustine church and school. The lots lay vacant until MTEC took it over and worked with community residents to create a beautiful garden. In 1991 the garden was named after famous community advocate/environmentalist Hattie Carthan. In the mid 90s the garden was slated to become the site for Bed Stuy chapter of PAL. The gardeners, community residents and well-wishers worked with their councilmember (Mary Pinkett) rallied and distributed petitions to halt the sale of the property. The garden also enjoys the support and respect of our NYS senator Vilmanette Montgomery who shows up in our new market occasionally for community programs and conferences. Councilman Al Vann currently supports our Youth internship program which allows neighborhood youths to learn about farming in the garden and earn by working in the market from July to November.

Within the last eight years alone, our garden has expanded its food security and environmental justice programming in order to address the issue of food insecurity and health disparities evident in the Bed Stuy neighborhood by adding nutrition awareness and food security workshops, wellbeing workshops, intergenerational community councils, an international food festival and cooking demonstrations with youth and senior populations. The garden has made several strategic moves to increase community resilience to the issue of food insecurity in Central Brooklyn:- our new hoophouse allows our community gardeners to extend the growing season and educates our children about growing food from seed. Livestock raised on the farm provides eggs to community residents as well as manure for the plants. Using manure eliminates the need to use chemical fertilizers.

In 2009, community advocate Yonnette Fleming led gardeners to revitalize and reclaim an abandoned land parcel which was used to dump toxic materials for over twenty years. Thousands of volunteer hours helped us to convert that blighted property into a thriving farmers market which increases the neighborhoods limited access to fresh food thus our overall community health. In the first year of market, the farmers market distributed over eight thousand pounds of fresh food and employed seven neighborhood teenagers to learn on the farm and work in the market.

As per the NYPD Compstat statistics, the market is located on one of the most dangerous blocks in Bedford Stuyvesant Brooklyn. In 2009 there were several shootings resulting in death. A few of those shootings occurred within 200 feet of the market.

The shootings and violence around parks and markets in Central Brooklyn prompted the market Project director (trained Just Food advocate Yonnette Fleming to begin advocating for safer streets around farmers markets located in high crime neighborhoods. In the summer of 2010, the garden received a DOHMH PlayStreets award to engage community residents in food and fitness activities on Clifton Place (facing the garden and market)

Ms Fleming was also instrumental in creating and administering a four part basic advocacy training series to staff from 23 food and fitness organizations. This basic advocacy training assisted community leaders from those organizations to understand how to educate, organize and mobilize people around public safety in the community ,effectively communicate their needs to elected politicians in order to effect positive change in their communities. Several organizations who received that training have indicated support and commitment for ongoing advocacy efforts.

Advocacy Training

Basic Advocacy Training for community residents to gain the skills necessary to educate and engage neighborhood stakeholders in local advocacy around food. We are also hoping to create valuable relationships with community residents of Bedford Stuyvesant to help evolve the work of advocacy in this area.

Over the duration of the course, residents will learn the key steps of advocacy. Participants will explore strategies and policies that promote food justice and public safety and develop a group proposal which includes new initiatives. Community residents/participants will learn the general skills and steps necessary to organize for change in the community.

Participants who complete the 5 session course will receive a certificate in basic Community advocacy 101. Participants are strongly encouraged to attend ongoing changemaking sessions at the Hattie Carthan garden/market.

We are indebted to the following resources in helping us organize the training and plan our activities: Networking for Policy Change: An Advocacy Training Manual by the Policy Project, Just Food Advocacy ToolKit, An Introduction to Advocacy: Training Guide by Ritu R. Sharma, Manual for Facilitators of Advocacy Training Sessions from WOLA, the Grassroots Advocacy Training Exchange.

objectives:

1.Community members will learn why citizen advocacy is crucial

2.Community members will learn what kinds of issues can be addressed through policy and how to identify them

3.Community members will examine effective proposals and learn to create a proposal

4.Community members will learn how policy works in NYC and NYS

5.Community members will be able to identify resources that keep them informed about issues pending legislation

Expectations:

For all the participants:

1.Develop basic advocacy skills

2.Be able to create effective advocacy goals and objectives

3.Be able to identify different steps in advocacy process and understand how the city and state works.

4.Gather statistics for advocacy campaigns.

5.Help support campaigns by gathering petitions from community members, write and call politicians to voice your support for Hattie Carthan community campaigns.For all the participants:

1.Develop basic advocacy skills

2.Be able to create effective advocacy goals and objectives

3.Be able to identify different steps in advocacy process and understand how the city and state works.

4.Gather statistics for advocacy campaigns.

5.Help support campaigns by gathering petitions from community members, write and call politicians to voice your support for Hattie Carthan community campaigns.

For all the participants:

1.Develop basic advocacy skills

2.Be able to create effective advocacy goals and objectives

3.Be able to identify different steps in advocacy process and understand how the city and state works.

4.Gather statistics for advocacy campaigns.

5.Help support campaigns by gathering petitions from community members, write and call politicians to voice your support for Hattie Carthan community campaigns.

Food justice for All Course

Facilitated by urban farmer/food justice/sovereignty educator Yonnette Fleming

Founder of Programs for Resilience @2007

Place: Magnolia Tree and Earth Center

Course description:

This course critically examines the contemporary food system by providing a grassroots framework for understanding and addressing issues of food justice. The course addresses how racism and policies crafted by elite and corporate interests have created a food system which funnels healthy nutritious food to white, elite and privileged populations while simultaneously creating opportunities for these same corporate interests to generate funding streams which purport to resolve the lack of access to fresh food in poor communities through dependency social work models. The course examines economic, political and social disparities, how failed policies impact community health and discusses innovative organizing strategies to foster community resilience. Using the discipline of critical race theory, we observe where the heaviest burdens of agricultural practices fall, including the effects of socio-economics on community health and examine the ways that urban agriculture, community gardening and community based farmers markets can be viable tools for achieving food justice. Participants gain practical knowledge of the U.S food system, global food history, and receive tools for community organizing and advocacy which gives them a sound food justice foundation to build on in their food movement work.

Main concepts: Defining food justice, food security, food sovereignty, current food system analysis: (production to consumption/ local to global) industrial to post industrial, Food Justice movement history, Critical Race theory, Structural racism in the Food system, disparities, food systems analysis including food access

Content:

•Current food system analysis, from seed to seed, from local to global

•Global and national Food Sovereignty movement history from food security to food justice

•Racial realism. How racism impacts the current food system

•Health disparities, community health, community resilience, oppression

•Rebalancing power, grassroots community organizing

•Sustainability, community resilience, participatory democracy, living democracy, cultural capital

•Local responses to food access/justice issues: urban agriculture as a tool for food justice, making the case for community gardens and farmers markets as viable tools for achieving food justice.For all the participants:

1.Develop basic advocacy skills

2.Be able to create effective advocacy goals and objectives

3.Be able to identify different steps in advocacy process and understand how the city and state works.

4.Gather statistics for advocacy campaigns.

5.Help support campaigns by gathering petitions from community members, write and call politicians to voice your support for Hattie Carthan community campaigns.