chickenhead
05-18-2010, 10:10 PM
Have been formulating the idea over the last couple days, wanted a wider group to bounce it off of, maybe someone would have an interesting tweak to suggest.
The main idea is around community building, increasing local (healthy) food production, making locally grown food cheaper, and investing in the community. Think of it as a distributed garden.
The basic idea would be:
A.) A community wakes up to find a single tomato start on each of their front walks one morning in spring, along with a note inviting them to be a part of a wonderful experiment.
B.) They are asked to grow and care for it, and keep what they wish to eat -- but to please donate the extra to a charity vegetable stand. There would be a simple website they could sign up with that would have info for their little area, and keep them up to date on where, and when, and whatnot.
C.) Veges are sold, fruit stand style, at inexpensive prices, back into the community, with 100% of the proceeds going back into the community. Say scholarships at the local high school for instance. It seems like an easy sell -- high quality veges at cheap prices, with all the money going to local charity,
The important part isn't even really the fundraising or the scholarship, if you dropped 10,000 free vege starts into a community and a large number of them were grown and people just ate them all it would still be a very positive thing, it's less food shipped in from halfway around the world, more people finding the joys of gardening, more people eating healthy food, and sharing with their friends and family and neighbors anyway -- but I think the community fundraising part of it would be a hook that people would like. Break an entire farm down into it's very smallest atomic element and distribute it one piece to a person, and letting someone do an act of charity doing something so easy and enjoyable.
The main idea is around community building, increasing local (healthy) food production, making locally grown food cheaper, and investing in the community. Think of it as a distributed garden.
The basic idea would be:
A.) A community wakes up to find a single tomato start on each of their front walks one morning in spring, along with a note inviting them to be a part of a wonderful experiment.
B.) They are asked to grow and care for it, and keep what they wish to eat -- but to please donate the extra to a charity vegetable stand. There would be a simple website they could sign up with that would have info for their little area, and keep them up to date on where, and when, and whatnot.
C.) Veges are sold, fruit stand style, at inexpensive prices, back into the community, with 100% of the proceeds going back into the community. Say scholarships at the local high school for instance. It seems like an easy sell -- high quality veges at cheap prices, with all the money going to local charity,
The important part isn't even really the fundraising or the scholarship, if you dropped 10,000 free vege starts into a community and a large number of them were grown and people just ate them all it would still be a very positive thing, it's less food shipped in from halfway around the world, more people finding the joys of gardening, more people eating healthy food, and sharing with their friends and family and neighbors anyway -- but I think the community fundraising part of it would be a hook that people would like. Break an entire farm down into it's very smallest atomic element and distribute it one piece to a person, and letting someone do an act of charity doing something so easy and enjoyable.