"Poverty is the mother of invention."

Team Mental brainstorming with Juanita while Team Physical Labor does  work

Today we went to the Cherry Hill Urban Garden, run by the most amazing 70 year old woman, Juanita Ewell. She started the Urban Garden three years ago after she retired, and has been working on it ever since. She has a grand vision for her garden: she wants to get the community involved, open a farmer's market every week, sell to more restaurants in the area, create a space for the community to come together and learn about healthy, sustainable nutrition, and probably even more that she didn't share with us. 

The garden fills a very important niche for the community, which is filled with fast food restaurants. It doesn't have a grocery store either, meaning that without Juanita, people would not ever be exposed to raw, unprocessed foods. She told us that it has been hard to get the neighborhood involved, and that most of her help has come from people from outside of it, like college students and Americorps volunteers. The people of Cherry Hill just don't know about nutrition; they don't know that your diet strongly correlates with your health, and they don't know how to cook and prepare a healthy meal. Since Juanita's garden is a completely foreign concept to them, they just aren't likely to get involved. She's been trying to get them interested through their kids, and knows that people will come around, but it will take a while.

It made me think that too many takeaways, too little proper food, too much grazing food and too few family meals are to blame for the health issue among the poor. With the decline of the family- wrought by the policies of successive governments - patterns of eating have changed. Meals in many households, especially those of the relatively poor, are no longer family or social occasions. It is also sometimes alleged that people buy prepared food because they are cheap. In fact, sometimes you will find stores that sell an astonishing range of vegetables at equal astonishing price. Like Juanita said, although we can not be sure that having more vegetables will keep people away from illness, at least we can start from living a more healthy life to try not to let health problems be our biggest problems that influence our financial status. And it seems to me like a dead loop that poor people eat poor things, and thus are exposed to higher risks to obesity, cardiac problems, etc, and years after year heavy illness easily drag people into bankruptcy without/even with insurance covered, and this is how poor people get poorer or even homeless. 

Juanita did so much with so little, and her enthusiasm was inspiring. She does everything for the operation. From the actual gardening to developing programs, fundraising, marketing, networking, Juanita does it all -- and she loves it. I was motivated by what she was talking about how important it is to do something you are really into, and I begin to think that it is never too late to start doing something you really want to. 

After we left the Urban Garden, we obviously got free Rita's for the first day of spring.

We also watched Baltimore, We Love You, a documentary about urban poverty. To be completely honest, I couldn't focus on the message because the film was literally monologue after monologue layered with the same b-roll shots and looped elevator music.  Apparently, other people enjoyed it. I don't know. I couldn't tell you. We wrapped up the evening with a reflection on the day's activities and did more.

-Clara and Amanda