Planting Justice has been busy this summer!

We have transformed dozens of front-yards and backyards across the Bay Area, which provide five living-wage jobs in urban food production and help subsidize the costs for local families to produce thousands of pounds of sustainable organic food. In addition, we have been working tirelessly to empower low-income communities with the skills and opportunities to lead a transition to a just and sustainable food system!

For example, we offer regular free workshops to the neighbors surrounding Burbank Community Garden on 65th Ave and Macarthur in East Oakland as we build upon the 26 fruit trees that have just begun to bear fruit in this emerging food forest. We also lead community gardening workshops with the Keller Plaza Community on Mondays and Wednesdays to build an edible garden for hundreds of Eritrean- and Ethiopian-American residents at this affordable housing project in North Oakland; we work with the Insight Garden Program and 30 men in the garden at San Quentin State Prison; and we offer free green-jobs training on our rooftop garden/nursery with various youth groups including West Oakland Youth Standing Empowered.

In addition to all this, we have started two new projects this month. Every Friday, Marta Tesfamariam and Haleh Zandi of Planting Justice are leading a food justice/culinary arts course with 20 high school students at Mandela Academy in East Oakland, where we are beginning to build a 1000 square foot permaculture garden together for their community on campus. Zandi and Gavin Raders also have begun building an easily accessible garden for the elderly at Bancroft Senior Homes in East Oakland, where we lead organic gardening workshops with residents.

As always, you can check out the most recent pictures from our garden installations on Planting Justice's Flickr Page.

We also are working to make our website a platform for free, open-source knowledge that will help people replicate the work we are doing to grow food for themselves and their community in the easiest and most ecologically sustainable way possible. So check out the "resources" section of our website at www.plantingjustice.org.