Subject: Maui Community Garden

From: [email-masked]
Date: 11 Jan 1995 01:43:51 -0000

Aloha from Hawaii.  

My name is Shay Chan.  I am the Coordinator of the Ma'alaea Organic Community
Garden on Maui.  I am writing to you because I am searching for programs
similar to ours.

We are not a community garden in the usual sense of the word.  Rather than
rent out individual plots for private use by members of the community, our
garden is made up of relatively large plots and raised beds.  People help the
garden -- weeding, sifting compost into soil, composting, building planter
boxes, planting, etc. -- and in return , they  earn the right to harvest a
fair share of the produce.

We also donate 50 to 100 pounds of food weekly to Maui's hungry.  In 1994, we
donated 3,308 pounds of organic produce. 

The mission of the Ma'alaea Community Garden is to promote a healthy,
sustainable and self-sufficient community on Maui by teaching its citizens to
respect and care for Maui's natural resources through organic gardening and
composting.

We've developed a community program to compost green waste and home kitchen
compostibles, created a complete recycling center for the Ma'alaea community,
and established a comprehensive composting demonstration site.

We've also developed a youth education outreach program to teach life science
to Maui school children through organic gardening and composting.

On a recent trip to San Francisco and Portland, I learned that community
gardens are relatively common, but projects such as ours seem to be rare.  I
know that there is such a thing as "Community Supported Agriculture" - which
sounds similar to what we are doing.  I know that there are programs in Santa
Cruz but I don't know anything about them.  

I need to know about similar programs for various reasons:

1.  to learn from you  -- we've been around for five years, but have only
been incorporated as a 501c3 for one, and we're constantly refining and
redefining our program.
2.  for credibility -- in our searches for funding and attempts to get full
support from the county government, and to encourage similar projects around
the island, it would help to know that other similar successful programs
exist. 

I am currently putting together a program to bring the people we feed through
the Maui Food Bank into the garden so that they can receive the educational,
social, and therapeutic benefits of working in the garden themselves.
Information about programs that are teaching people to feed themselves and
helping resolve social and economic issues would also be very much
appreciated. 

Mahalo (thank you).