Re: How to Start, get Participants

S* G*

>
>Latino families in the neighborhood also but they tend to keep to
>themselves because of language barrier and not wanting to be discovered
>if they aren't legal. We sometimes get Spanish versions of things but I
>haven't seen any response.

Sounds like having a bilingual spanish speaking gardener to get things 
going would
be a big help.  I would see if you could do a presentation at the church.
Also the church might serve as the address for participants who might find it
risky to give their true last names and address.

A morning garden adventure with the younger children and an after school
gardening program for school age kids could get a lot involved.  Serving
culturally appropriate food as a snack can help as a draw.
Also find out if males or females or both garden in these cultures.
If it's one or the other it would be important to have the same gender
as the organizer or at least present as a teacher.  It can be considered
very loose behavior to do otherwise.

You might also have plots for each interested classroom or headstart school.
The kids will want the parents to see their garden and it can become known 
that way.

To counteract the low literacy levels, do the instruction with demos, and/or
slide presentations and videos.  Booklets with simple language and pictures
often help.

Are there English as a second language classes in your area?  If so ask to
speak at those.  If not, see if you can partner with someone to start them
and get them to include important garden words early in the lessons.

Also do a survey to find out what foods people would like that are hard to
come by in the grocery store.  Include those in your gardening.  Some people
may have access to heirloom seeds and be willing to share them.

For Friday night at the garden, rather than doing actual gardening, you might
keep an open area and invite musical groups to come and play and families
to picnic on the lawn.  This can be fairly simple and consist of a guitar
player who can get the group to sing as well.

It might help to have a playground area for the children as part of the 
community garden.
Many children will help in the garden, and some will want to play part of 
the time.

Sharon
gordonse@one.net

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