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.