Great news!
The Capital Area Food Bank’s Urban Demonstration Garden has been selected by Washington DC Green Festival as a finalist for their Community Award! Green Festival is America’s largest and longest-running sustainability and green living event. There, companies and organizations showcase green products, and attendees learn how to live healthier and more sustainable lives.
At the Washington, DC event this weekend, Green Festival will award a $5000 grant to a local nonprofit. Projects must be locally-based, with creative ideas, measurable goals, and a direct benefit to the local sustainability community. Green Festival chooses five finalists, and the public votes to choose the winner! Please click here to vote for the Capital Area Food Bank! It takes just a few seconds, and you can vote once a day between now and Friday.
The CAFB’s Urban Demonstration Garden is a hands-on learning laboratory for food growing education. The award would be a great opportunity to further CAFB’s mission in promoting nutrition education while expanding access to healthy produce. The garden demonstrates how to grow food in a variety of urban settings – from backyards to balconies – and how to stretch food budgets using low-cost vegetable gardening techniques.
CAFB takes a unique, educational approach at teaching the food bank’s partner agencies to start their own teaching gardens. As such, these organizations – over 500 in the Washington metro area – are then better able to provide their clients with fresh food and nutrition education.
Techniques taught, whether the topic is rainwater harvest or organic pest management, are both economically and environmentally sustainable.
Any funds awarded will be used to increase and diversify CAFB’s food production by installing in-ground garden beds and purchasing plants – especially fruit trees and vines. In addition, the food bank will purchase compost tumblers to more effectively turn food waste into valuable soil. Any funds left over will go to a few rain barrels to demonstrate rainwater harvest on a smaller scale.
Get to the polls already, and please tell your friends to do the same. Washington, DC Green Festival will be held on May 31st and June 1st at 801 Mt. Vernon Place, NW, DC. For more information or to purchase tickets, click here.