volume 1, number 1
June 2008

Welcome to the first issue of The Root of the Matter. Through our new monthly electronic communication, Collective Roots will keep you informed about recent successes, new initiatives, upcoming events, and ways you can get involved and support our work for food system change in East Palo Alto. 

RECENT SUCCESS
New Farmers' Market Brings Fresh Food to East Palo Alto
Dozens of farmers and hundreds of community members turned out for the grand opening of the East Palo Alto (EPA) Community Farmers' Market on Sunday, June 1st. Excited shoppers selected from bountiful piles of sweet summer strawberries and cherries, and fresh, crunchy asparagus and broccoli, as well as fragrant flower bouquets. See photos of the delicious abundance here.

After years in the making, this new weekly market is a welcome addition and major asset to this community, which has a dearth of places to shop for healthy food; EPA has not even had a supermarket within its borders since the 1970s.

The market will be open on Sunday afternoons year round at St. Francis of Assisi Church, from 3-6 PM. For FAQs about the EPA Community Farmer's Market, click here. Collective Roots is the nonprofit sponsor of the market, and we are committed to ensuring its success through fundraising, advocacy, and education. Click here to find out how you can support this effort.
I LOVE MY ROOTS
Meet Cornelia Fletcher
Cornelia is a landscape contractor by trade and has a long history of community involvement in East Palo Alto. Recently, Cornelia was hired to help organize the EPA Community Farmer's Market. Read more about her work and interests here. We will introduce you to more of our colleagues in subsequent newsletters.
PAST EVENTS
Spring Tea Tasting and Garden Open House Celebrated Volunteers on April 5th
Collective Roots is thrilled to announce the new garden underway at the East Palo Alto Charter School (EPACS), thanks to the hard work of hundreds of extraordinary community volunteers, students, and their families. On April 5th we celebrated their amazing work at our Spring Tea Tasting and Garden Open House.



At the open house, the proud students led donors on tours of the garden, and made a presentation about why they enjoy being involved with the garden project. Donors Laura and John Hale won a raffle to tour Jesse Cool's private garden. See highlights from the day here. We are grateful to Samovar Tea Lounge in San Francisco for donating the delicious tea for this event.

East Palo Alto Was A City On the Move With Delicious Health On April 12th
On April 12th, Collective Roots, the East Palo Alto Health Roundtable, and Get Fit sponsored Delicious Health, a day of workshops, food, and fun family activities to highlight the community's major efforts to take charge of nutrition, food access, health, and fitness. Click here to read more about the day's events, which included tree planting in honor of Arbor Day, a performance by the East Palo Alto Soul Line Dancers, and a screening of A City On the Move, a documentary which chronicles the personal fitness journeys of dozens of residents of Palo Alto and Belle Haven. View photos from the day (including a jogging carrot!) here.
PROGRAMS
Garden Based Learning
Jordan Garcia of the Stanford Community Writing Project explains the benefits of the garden based learning model, as employed by Collective Roots. Read his article here.

Youth Development
Revolution Foods is starting a (you guessed it!) revolution in the lunchroom at East Palo Alto Charter School by introducing healthy meal choices and educating students in the science of nutrition. Read more here in an article by Stanford student Alexandra Ford.

Food System Change
Lucia Constantine of the Stanford Community Writing Project explains how the East Palo Alto community became a virtual "food desert" and offers solutions here.

Environmental Action
Stockamp is a company that provides revenue cycle management for hospitals and health systems. Every year, Stockamp leadership gives project teams two days and $10,000 to use in serving an organization of their choice. This year Collective Roots was chosen to benefit from their generosity and sweat equity!
On June 5th and 9th, Stockamp employees performed hard labor to help Collective Roots build a 26 x 48 foot greenhouse in the flagship garden at East Palo Alto Charter School. The greenhouse will be used to grow fruits and vegetables for the large school garden, and native plants for restoration projects in the adjacent East Palo Alto Baylands.
MONTHLY WORKDAYS
Our monthly workdays allow Collective Roots to keep our school gardens in good shape and provide opportunities for larger scale projects to be accomplished. These events are usually held on the 4th Saturday of every month. Volunteers generally come from the schools we serve, the East Palo Alto community, and our partner organizations.

Our next monthly workday will be on Saturday, June 28th at the East Palo Alto Charter School Garden, from 8 am - noon. Come one, come all! Click here for more information and directions. To sign up to be a team leader, call 650.324.2769 or email volunteer@collectiveroots.org.

Our most recent workday was held on May 31st. The day was a huge success and a lot of fun, despite cloudy skies, thanks to a group of undergraduate volunteers from the Stanford University's Black Student Union who weeded and mulched all the garden beds. Click here to see photos from the day.

Stanford
COMMUNITY EVENTS
An Evening with Remarkable Trees: A June 22nd Benefit For Canopy
Reknowned author Thomas Pakenham will share his global adventures in search of remarkable trees at a sunset dinner talk on June 22nd to benefit Canopy's urban forestry work. More info about the Canopy benefit can be found at http://www.canopy.org/PakenhamPage.html.


Collective Roots and Canopy support and participate in the East Palo Alto Tree Initiative, which holds the goal of planting 1,000 trees in our city by 2010. Last December, Canopy and Collective Roots planted over 50 fruit trees in the East Palo Alto Charter School garden as part of this Initiative.

WHAT'S GROWING
Right now, there's a lot of "buzz" about pollinator-friendly gardens so we've built one at EPACS. Pollinators provide 1/3 of all the food we eat and are threatened world-wide by the misuse of pesticides. The same bees that produce our honey are also needed to produce 90% of all flowering plants. To read an article by Stanford student Erica Swanson about the importance of pollinators, click here.

Pictured here: Gabby and Yulitza, 4th graders who participated in the Pollinator Plant project, standing next to the California Coneflower.
FUNDRAISING
The image you see of the butterfly was made by a student participating in Collective Roots' garden based learning programs based at East Palo Alto Charter School. This beautiful artwork provides an inspiring image and metaphor for the current direction in which our work is headed.

Reading about the work of Collective Roots, one might imagine that we have a large staff and unlimited resources at our service, given all that we accomplish. The truth is that we have a small staff and limited resources.

We need your support, now more than ever, in order to sustain all of the programs and projects that touch the lives of thousands of children and people of all ages every year. Please consider supporting us at this critical moment of our development. Simply click on the butterfly image to make a secure online donation, or click here to download information for mailing in your donation
Consider A Contribution To Our Biofuel Van Fund
 BuiFuel

Collective Roots is taking it on the road! We need a van to transport our students, volunteers, and staff and enable us to bring our programs to more schools and sites in the community. In alignment with our environmental mission and work, we will convert this van to use biodiesel fuel.


The Cloud Star company has made a generous donation to start this fund. Please consider making a donation that will bring us closer to this goal.


If you want to know more about biofuels, click here to see a Powerpoint presentation about where biofuels come from, why we use them, and how we can make them even better, by Stanford student Brede Kolsrud. Or click here for a one-page fact sheet.

Special thanks to the students of the Stanford Community Writing Project for contributing a number of articles in this issue.


NOTE: This newsletter employs hyperlinks that act as shortcuts to related documents or web pages. Click on the green underlined words in the articles above to find out more information.

 
 
mission statement