Once again we find ourselves in a flurry of planning, hiring, and rolling out workshops in the late Spring and early Summer. By the end of June, we usually take a deep breath and enjoy hearing the news from the workshops taking place throughout the State.
This summer, we are pleased to be working at BRIDGE Housing sites as far north as Santa Rosa and Suisun City, and as far south as San Diego. Perhaps most exciting is our urban gardening workshop in West Oakland. Each workshop participant has been given a container in an urban garden to plant and care for – with all residents encouraged to get gardening! We’re also working in San Mateo at Santa Inez Apartments, and we just wrapped up big projects with the San Francisco Food Bank, SHELTER Inc. of Contra Costa County, and FESCO in Hayward. We know that Kaiser has decided to continue to fund our work in CCC, so we have started to plan for those workshops set to begin in Fall 2010.
As an organization, we are also spending time this year, with the help our committed Board members (specifically our Strategic Planning Committee), to determine what course our organization should take going forward. We are set to begin our fifth year in operation—quite a milestone!—and we have so many ideas about how to broaden our impact on the health of our communities. Look for news about our upcoming Food Smarts Training Program, which we hope to get off the ground by the end of the year. We have the programming essentials in place and are going to start fundraising this summer.
In other news, all of us in San Francisco are enjoying the local produce, bustling Farmer’s Markets, and the opportunity to try new recipes and techniques. Happy summer!