Looking for Gulf Coast garden news

**Amanda Maria Edmonds a*@gmail.com**

Hello--

I'm glad to know Jeannie Abi-Nader and family are safe... I don't 
personally know any others in the community garden world on the Gulf 
Coast, and I presume that restoring gardens will be of secondary 
importance after basic needs for shelter and water and such are met.  
Once that happens, though, I'm assuming food security in these 
communities will be an ongoing and growing concern, as people have lost 
financial resources, jobs, etc that let them stock their pantries.  I 
understand the America's Second Harvest is playing a big role in 
emergency food assistance, but want to figure out how best to catalyze 
community gardeners elsewhere to think about how best we can help 
eventually restore.  I'd like input from all of you on the role ACGA 
can play in these efforts.  Please send a message to the list with your 
thoughts.

I would love to be in touch with gardeners and garden leaders from the 
Gulf Coast, though I imagine many are still displaced or occupied with 
find family and restoring basic needs.  If anyone can connect me, 
please do.

Maybe a Relief Seed Bank would be a place to start?  We work with a 
family from Niger here in Michigan, and as the mom took a trip back 
last month to her mother's village in rural Niger, we sent lots of 
extra veggie seeds with her.  She said that most people in the villages 
were literally starving (the current famine in Niger has only received 
marginal press here), and to imagine that these seeds could literally 
be their only food source was humbling about how a little could do a 
lot.  I could imagine with a little effort from gardeners all over, we 
could get seeds of plenty to that region of the country.

I've been exploring web sites of many of the grassroots groups in New 
Orleans who are contributing to relief efforts-- those may be some 
organizations to partner with for whatever effort is appropriate and 
what is most needed to restore gardens and hope throughout the Gulf.  
Is anyone familiar with any one of them?

Looking forward to hearing people's ideas.

Best,
Amanda
(ACGA Board Member in Michigan)

Amanda Maria Edmonds    			                            	
Executive Director, Growing Hope
amanda@growinghope.net
734.330.7576

"We must be the change we wish to see in the world."
"To forget to dig the earth and to tend the soil is to forget 
ourselves."
					-Mahatma Ghandi

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