Garden Documentary that Went Under My Radar

**A*@aol.com**

Friends, 

This looks great, and perhaps garden organizations may want to acquire copies 
of it to show members and funders. 

Everbest, 
Adam Honigman
Volunteer, 
 Clinton Community Garden 

11/18/2004 
Community Gardens of Chester County featured in documentary  
By Bryan G. Robinson  

Now the local community gardening program, which currently works with 51 
garden projects throughout the county and over 1,000 people, is being featured in 
a television documentary that began airing on ABC-TV stations throughout the 
U.S. Oct. 24. 
The 58-minute documentary called "Hunger No More: Faces Behind The Facts" 
aired on Oct. 31 on WPVI-TV Channel 6 and will air this Sunday, Nov. 21 on 
WEVD-TV from Philadelphia at 1 p.m. It is part of ABC-TV's "Vision and Values" 
series in partnership with the Interfaith Broadcasting Commission, and was produced 
by Mennonite Media Inc. of Harrisonburg, Va. at the request of the National 
Council of Churches.
Susan Goldsworthy, director and founder of the local community gardening 
organization, said producers first contacted her in May after learning of the 
organization through the Evangelical Lutheran Church of America, one of the 
organization's funding sources.
Then in June, the segment on the organization was filmed, with filming taking 
place at the children's garden in Modena, which is next to the Children, 
Youth and Women's Alliance Center there.
About 12 to 15 children, who range in age from three- to 13-years-old, take 
care of the garden, and learn about community, stewardship and the environment 
as well as how to grow vegetables for their families, she said. 
"[The garden] helps families on a limited food budget and teaches the 
children lifelong skills," she said. "Once you learn how to garden, it's not 
something you forget."
The garden is just one of 51 projects Community Gardens has throughout the 
county, with one-third to half of those supplying food in some way for the 
community. The rest are primarily beautification projects, she said.
"One of our major goals is to help people grown their own food and this is 
one way of helping people to feed themselves," she said. Or, to put it another 
way, she said: "This is one of ways to mitigate food insecurity, which there is 
an awful lot of in our community, I'm afraid."
She said that last year 44,300 families in Chester County relied on soup 
kitchen or food cupboards, according to Chester County Cares, which provides 
services for soup kitchens and food cupboards. 
"The thing I like so much about growing your own food is rather than a hand 
out, it's a hand up," she said. 
Asked if she had seen the documentary, she said she had. "It's very good and 
it's very well done." (Personally she said that she believes it is also 
current in that if we as humans could feed other nations instead of going to war 
with other nations, that would be a good thing.)
Goldsworthy said she hoped people in Chester County learn that even in a 
wealthy county like Chester County a food insecurity problem exists. "Hunger is 
not a problem we as a county, a state, a nation should have, she said. "We have 
so much food," she said.
"The U.S. is the only developed nation in the world that has a hunger and we 
haven't made it a priority as it should be," she said. 
In addition to the segment on Community Gardens of Chester County, the 
documentary also features segments on the Society of St. Andrew's, Bread for the 
World, Church World Service and the Mennonite Central Committee. The documentary 
also has interviews with Sen. Elizabeth Dole and former Senator George 
McGovern and Joan Holmes of the United Nations Hunger Project.
Burton Buller, who directed the documentary for Mennonite Media Inc. and has 
directed more than 50 documentaries for the company, said he was impressed by 
Community Gardens of Chester County. "I found the project fascinating," he 
said. "What impressed me was the systematic way Susan had of creating the gardens 
and they're wonderful gardens."
Asked if he believed the program really made a dent on the hunger problem, he 
said he wasn't sure. However, he said: "At least, they're doing something 
where they're supplementing people's diet with fruits and vegetables," he said.
That, he said, alone was a good thing.
Like Goldsworthy, he said the U.S. wastes much more food than it what it 
takes to feed the nation. The only way this can be stopped is if regulations and 
incentives are put in place to make sure that food doesn't get discarded, he 
said. 
Already, he said some states have provided tax incentives for trucking 
companies who haul food that is being discareded. "But there are lots of other 
issues that need to be resolved," he said.
He said according to the Earth Institute, the cost of eradicating world 
hunger would cost people about 5 to 10 cents a day. "We just don't have the will to 
do it," he said. 

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