RE: Evaluation/Research Roundtable in NY?

C* N*

America's Second Harvest, the national donation system for food and related
products, does a national survey about every 5 years to show a snapshot of
hunger.  A2H provides food to non-profit agencies for distribution to
hunger-relief programs.

This report is incredibly detailed and uses enough statistics to make your
head spin.  It is also regarded as one of the definitive data sources on
hunger in America.

However I like Adam's suggestion that we come up with a survey that
participating community gardens could complete annually.  Use of this data
could be very significant in obtaining funding and confirming the value of
community gardening not only as a food source, but a means of community
development, microenterprise, etc...

It would also provide a longitudinal approach to track changes over time.

My first three questions would be:

1) Who would be the repository of this information?
2) What is it we want to know?
3) Any volunteers who might like to take this on?

Any thoughts?

> -----Original Message-----
> From:	Adam36055@aol.com [SMTP:Adam36055@aol.com]
> Sent:	Thursday, April 04, 2002 2:37 PM
> To:	ebyrnes@socwk.utah.edu; community_garden@mallorn.com
> Subject:	Re: [cg] Evaluation/Research Roundtable in NY?
> 
> Dear Ed & Research fans,
> 
> The biggest and best funded unversity based community garden study is
> being 
> done under the aegis of the St. Louis Gateway Greening folks
>  <A HREF="http://stlouis.missouri.org/gatewaygreening/index.html";>Gateway 
> Greening</A> 
> 
> called the "Whitmire Study"  <A 
> HREF="http://stlouis.missouri.org/gatewaygreening/WhitmireStudy.htm";>
> WhitmireStudy.html</A> 
> 
> As this has been going on for a few years now, you may want to look at it
> as 
> an example of serious, quantitative, community garden research. 
> 
> I know that for the academics among you, CG studies may be a burgeoning 
> sub-specialty for research in social work,  sociology, city planning,
> urban 
> studies  and anthropology .  These talks may help scholars come up with a
> few 
> standards for research in this area.
> 
> I'd be interested in participating as a non-scholar: i.e,  somebody who
> would 
> be cherry-picking facts and factoids from serious research and using them
> as 
> tools to bang legislators, decision makers (and most importantly, their
> aides 
> who actually read reports) over their heads to get increased funding for
> and 
> help preserve gardens.
> 
> A thought: Create a standard questionairre/census for community gardeners
> to 
> fill out under the aegis of the ACGA and local greening groups.  If it
> were 
> kept simple enough, it might be done by university undergraduates
> throughout 
> the country and provide researchers with a uniform way of getting a 
> "snapshot" of community gardens in this study. 
> 
> Best wishes,
> Adam Honigman
> 
> 
> 
>   
> 
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