Holiday Wreath and Card Making Saturday, December 10, 2011. 1-4PM. At the Hayes Valley Community Room: 403 Rose Stret. Hope to see you there!

By Karen Mauney-Brodek

This April-May issue of The Hayes Valley Voice and our upcoming meeting on April 28th are centered around environmentally focused organizations in the neighborhood.

Today, more and more people are coming to realize what many of us have known all along: Hayes Valley and other urban, dense neighborhoods like ours are of the greenest places you can live. The more we can get our needs met here, our parks, our food, our shopping and other needs – the more sustainable we will be because we can walk, bike and ride transit to shop, work and get around.

We need to continue to do things to improve our neighborhood – getting a full service grocery store and other needed retail. While we do complain about Muni, we do have good transit compared to many areas (that is why many of us live here) and by using transit and walking we are making healthier choices for our planet and ourselves.

Some organizations that are active in our neighborhood include: Project Homeless Connect Community Garden, Hayes Valley Farm, CommunityGrows Koshland Educational Garden, Urban Sprouts (creating learning gardens at our public schools), Neighborhood Parks Council, and Garden for the Environment. Our neighborhood works with other San Francisco environmentally- focused groups including: Friends of the Urban Forest, Public Utility Commission (reducing water use), Trust for Public Lands and the Recreation and Parks Department (which together are renovating the Hayes Valley Playground), San Francisco Parks Trust, and the Department of Public Works (helping turn concrete into planting beds and other projects).

Come to the next meeting on April 28th at the Korean American Center at 745 Buchanan Street, where we will have presentations by Garden for the Environment and Friends of the Urban Forest.

By Barbara Wenger

CommunityGrows, an environmental education program serving high-needs youth through gardening, cooking and green-jobs training, has been very busy this summer in the Western Addition. Thanks to our great partnerships with Mo’Magic-Western Addition groups, Hayes Valley Apartments, and other summer programs, we were able to serve over 300 youth this summer.

We built gardens at Hayward Recreation Center, Opportunity Impact and Booker T. Washington Community Center. We took field trips to many places, including Green Gulch Farm and Alemany Farm. We cooked every week at Hayes Valley Apartments Community Room on Wednesday afternoons, with each week being a fun experience of hands-on learning. Our Seed-to-Mouth cooking program, in its fifth year, had youth harvesting vegetables from the Koshland Learning Garden, prepping and preparing a three-course dinner and sharing it together.

Lajaiyah Watkins enjoys a delicious and heathy meal.

This fall we will be continuing our work with the students of John Muir Elementary School and starting a gardening program at Rosa Parks Elementary School. CommunityGrows will host a workday on September 18th in Koshland Park from 11:00 A.M. to 2:00 P.M., and we will have a garden fundraiser on October 16th from 1:00 to 4:00 P.M. in the Koshland Garden. There will be live music and fresh local food. Tickets are $20.00 and can be purchased from CommunityGrows, 300 Page St, San Francisco, CA 94102. We look forward to seeing you!