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Long Beach, CA, July 16, 2010

groOrganic awards the ninth of their 10 Garden Giveaways to The Neighborhood, A United Methodist Community (UMC) in downtown Long Beach, CA, and will take part in the church's new organic garden project on Friday, July 16, 2010. A certified groOrganic gardener will first meet with members of UCM to discuss their goals with this project, along with the garden design and selection of fruits and vegetables.

groOrganic will then return later in July to lead a presentation and some hands-on gardening activity with the children and staff to help educate them on the benefits of organic gardening, composting, and also on nutrition and community involvement. This will empower the community and provide them the opportunity to develop lifelong habits of nutrition, health and service. Producing their own organic garden promotes confidence and positive role models within the community for healthier lifestyles.

The Neighborhood UCM was nominated by Suzanne Barron, a member of the church. Ms. Barron wrote to groOrganic stating that UCM is an economically and culturally diverse urban faith community located in the heart of downtown Long Beach. The participants in The Neighborhood reflect the economic diversity of the surrounding area, in which over 36% of the people living around the church live below the poverty line, with 51% of the children and youth living in poverty. In the schools near the church, over seventy-five percent of the students receive free or subsidized school meals.

The Neighborhood is committed to helping families address their economic and health challenges through supporting creative labor and sustainable urban community-building. Currently, The Neighborhood hosts an after school program, CANTA!, that provides local elementary school students support as they work to achieve their educational goals. CANTA! also helps them to dream big dreams about what is possible for their lives.

The church is eager to incorporate gardening into their program for the children and their families. As well, the church hosts a program called Fitness 4 All, which focuses on bringing exercise and yoga to under- served populations in downtown (it is providing its third progressive marathon and yoga program for 4th and 5th graders) and encourages family health through fitness and nutrition.

The Neighborhood has turned two small areas of their courtyard into gardens for community members to plant their own vegetables, but they have a vision for the transformation of a much larger section of their grounds into an organic urban garden education space. It would be a place that families could grow some of their food needs, in turn helping them learn how to grow organic food in their own living spaces and explore how they could turn their gardening into means for economic sustainability.

The Neighborhood sees such a program as a wonderful way through which to provide activities that empower and inform people, with interactive leadership development sessions, providing them with the skills to create and implement their action plans, as well as how to evaluate and improve those plans. It will also provide an avenue through which to network and collaborate with other community agencies to build the bridges that they need in order to make significant changes in the lives of families that struggle with lack of funds, education and immigration issues.

Rev. Sandy Olewine is the pastor of The Neighborhood. She is a woman of great passion and vision who believes deeply that one of the most important roles of faith communities in today's urban environments is to be participants in casting a vision that brings to life the well-being, growth, health, safety and sustainability of all who reside in the city.

groOrganic will also present The Neighborhood UCM with a new unique gardening enrichment Curriculum Program that encompasses both California Board of Education Content Standards and State Standards. The groOrganic Certified Curriculum teaches students the importance of understanding our environment and how to protect it.