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Help Replant Community Now!
Page Creator: Warren Goldstein-Gelb
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About my nonprofit:
The Welcome Project
The mission of The Welcome Project is to empower immigrants, public housing tenants, and other low-income Somerville residents through providing advocacy and education services. The Welcome Project motivates...
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Fundraising target: $6,000
Total raised so far: $3,595.00
Fundraising progress
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My personal message:
Dear friends,

Eighteen years ago a group of recent Vietnamese immigrants living in a Somerville public housing development harvested life from an abandoned parking lot.  Through back-breaking labor they created a community garden, constructing trellises and plot dividers out of discarded box springs and scraps of plastic.

After many seasons of depending on their crops for income and on the garden for peace of mind, new construction at the housing development forced the garden to be torn down and relocated. (continued after update below...)

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UPDATE: 5.13.08.  Fix The Fence Day a Success, but the job's not done

As you can see from the flickr photos (below, left), a group of committed volunteers braved the rain on May 3 and helped construct fences and dig holes. Together with staff from the Somerville Housing Authority, all the fences were constructed in a nearby parking lot. Getting them into the garden was another matter as digging the holes for fence posts proved a challenge when we reached the rocky ledge 6 inches below the surface. Thanks to the back-breaking diligence of our volunteers, however, a number of holes got dug and we began installing fencing at 4:30 in the afternoon.

There's still a lot left to do. We have to deepen the holes and attach the gates to all of the fences. We're planning some additional volunteer days soon. Please email warrengg@gmail.com for more information.

A few days earlier, on May 1, volunteers helped the gardeners move their belongings from the parking lot into their now garden spots. Thanks especially to the 4 volunteers from firstgiving who lifted buckets and plants all day with us! Thanks also to Somerville Housing Authority staff, who provided trucks and muscles to help with the move.

The next step: Finish the Fence: We're looking for volunteers to help finish building the fences. We'll also be scheduling some volunteer afternoons soon.

Can you volunteer?  email warrengg@gmail.com for more information.

Fundraising: We've raised close to half of the funds we need to pay to relocate the gardeners in their new space. Please consider a contribution so we pay for the materials we're buying to fix the fence and complete the garden.

Can you make a donation? Click the button above.

Thanks everyone for your support  of the Mystic Community Garden as we work to replant community at the Mystic Housing Development this spring!

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The rest of the story (continued from above)...

For the last two years, these Somerville gardeners  have been gardening in plastic buckets in an empty church parking lot. They have waited patiently for a new garden to be ready for them.

Now, as we work to help the gardeners reclaim a new space to grow, we need your help.

Construction has been completed on the outside of the garden. All the outside fences and gates are up. But inside, there are no trellises or fencing between the 21 garden plots. For these immigrant urban gardeners,  these internal structures are critically important. Only weeks before the growing season, the garden is not ready.

In February, the Somerville Housing Authority agreed to allow the gardeners to use vertical structures in their new space. But we need to raise all the funds needed to purchase materials.

The Welcome Project, an independent 501c3 non-profit that works with the tenants to manage the garden, needs your help so that we can purchase materials and organize efforts needed for the garden to be successful.

Over the next several weeks, we need to raise $5,000 to “Fix the Fence” at the Mystic Community Garden.  We want to finish the construction by the first weekend in May, so the gardeners can move back in time for the growing season.

The ball is in our court. Can you help us raise the funds right now to replant community -- and enable a vibrant and unique community garden to be reborn this spring.

The Mystic  gardeners -- most of whom are Vietnamese -- have faced adversity before. Arriving in Somerville from Vietnam nearly 20 years ago, they found little in common with the rural landscape of their homeland. The Welcome Project helped convince the Somerville Housing Authority to let these gardeners cultivate crops on unused land at the Mystic Housing Development. Here, they built community and a successful urban garden was born in a public housing development.

The garden won the Massachusetts Horticultural Society's Garden of the Year award in 2001.

Now, the gardeners face one more hurdle so that they can replant the community they've successfully cultivated all these years.  The Housing Authority has agreed to supply the labor to install most of the fencing at no cost -- but the materials alone will cost several thousand dollars.

Any size contribution you make will get us closer to replanting community at the Mystic.

Please help with whatever donation you can afford. All contributions are tax deductible. The Welcome Project is a 501c3 charitable organization.

Donating through this website is simple, fast and totally secure. It is also the most efficient way to support this fundraising effort.

Many thanks for your support -- and don't forget to forward this to anyone who you think might want to donate too!

Online Donors to date:
Display Name Date Amount  Comment
Anonymous 5/23/2008 $1,200.00  
Firstgiving Matching Gift Program 5/15/2008 $50.00  
Firstgiving Matching Gift Program 5/15/2008 $50.00  
Sarah Shugars 5/12/2008 $100.00  
eif 5/4/2008 $20.00 thanks so much for reviving this garden! 
Danny LeBlanc 5/2/2008 $100.00 I wish I could join in for the work too, but am happy I can at least contribute this way.  
Ryan "Firstgiving" Doyon 5/2/2008 $50.00 It will never rain roses: when we want to have more roses we must plant more trees.”-George Eliot 
Firstgiving 5/2/2008 $100.00 Keep up the great work--thank you for letting us play a role in this project! 
Frank Days 5/2/2008 $50.00 Good luck with the garden 
Hannah Greenfield 5/2/2008 $50.00 Keep up the great work! 
Lauren Ulin 5/1/2008 $25.00 Claudia - keep up the good work! Good luck! 
Marc Slotnick 4/30/2008 $100.00 Congratulations on reopening the garden. I am so proud to have been involved in the redevelopment.  
Lisa Pollan 4/29/2008 $10.00  
Linda Cundiff 4/28/2008 $50.00  
Janine Fay 4/28/2008 $100.00 "Inch by inch, row by row, gonna make this garden grow..." 
tpklein 4/18/2008 $50.00  
Sandra Lee 4/13/2008 $25.00  
Amy Alberts 4/12/2008 $25.00  
Lisa Wong 4/11/2008 $50.00  
William Bennett 4/10/2008 $50.00  
Matt Oh 4/9/2008 $25.00 Best of luck! 
Dan Julian and Claudia Miranda-Julian 4/9/2008 $40.00  
stacy zimmerman 4/9/2008 $25.00  
Alice Erwin 4/9/2008 $50.00  
Cynthia Davis & Steve Molis 4/8/2008 $25.00  
Anon andon andon andon. 4/8/2008 $50.00  
Andrea Humez 4/8/2008 $25.00  
Carrie S. 4/8/2008 $25.00 I think this is a inspiring project. Good luck rebuilding your garden! 
Susann Wilkinson 4/8/2008 $25.00  
Anonymous 4/8/2008 $25.00  
Cynthia Bargar 4/8/2008 $100.00 a wonderful harbinger of spring! 
anonymous 4/8/2008 $50.00  
Naomi Slagowski 4/4/2008 $25.00 Good luck with your garden! 
Lisa 3/28/2008 $100.00  
* Total raised online: $2,845.00
Amount raised offline: $750.00
Grand Total: $3,595.00
Page tags garden, immigrants, somerville
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