Community Garden Storytelling Project of Flint | Youth Violence Prevention Center

The Community Garden Storytelling Project of Flint Community gardens and beautification projects can play a significant role in the restoration and revitalization of Flint by transforming uglyand uncared-for spaces into attractive gardens and places where neighbors and kids can meet, socialize and work together. Since January 2001, the University of Michigan School of Public Health has partnered with the Flint Urban Gardening and Land Use Corporation and the Neighborhood Violence Prevention Collaborative on a Prevention Research Center-affiliated research project, 'The Community Garden Storytelling Project of Flint'.

The project is guided by a 17-person Storytelling Committee, composed of community leaders, community gardeners, researchers, and neighborhood residents. The co-chairs for the Committee are Dr. Katherine Alaimo, Community Health Scholar at the UM-SPH, and Mary Alyce Stickney, president of Neighbors, a neighborhood that started a community garden in 2001. Through an inventory of Flint community gardens and beautification project, a neighborhood survey, case studies, storytelling and photography, this project has been documenting the benefits of the community gardens, determining the gardeners strengths and assessing their needs. The Committee is interested in the effects of community gardens on neighbor social relationships, neighborhood pride, beautification, neighborhood crime prevention, exercise and fruit and vegetable consumption.

The Committee published a Story/picture book, "From Seeds to Stories: the Community Garden Storytelling Project of Flint." The book promotes the existing community gardens and encourages other neighborhoods to start their own. Here's one of the stories, from a 14-year old girl who works and eats at the East Bishop/East Flint Park Block Club garden:

"I still work in the garden now, even though we're not
getting paid anymore. 'Cause, it's just the beauty of it. I'll take the money, but if there's no money involved then that's okay with me. 'Cause the money, I really didn't spend nothin' with the money, but candy and junk, and that's really not worth it all the time. One day, I was going to the store, and before I went to the store, I went down to the garden with some of my friends. And we looked to see if there was any tomatoes, and there was one, big, juicy, red tomato. And I was like, oh, I want this, so I grabbed it, I washed it off, I took it home, put some pepper on it, and then I was eating it on my way, going to the store. And I was going to the store, I was thinking like, this tomato is better than the Now and Laters that I want. And so the garden did make me so I didn't want any more candy, ever since. I eat it some of the time, but basically, I have a fruit or something. I used to be a candy freak, but now after all the vegetables that you get, they're good. They're like candy, but they're healthy!"

The Community Garden Storytelling Project of Flint is funded by the Neighborhood Violence Prevention Collaborative, the U-M Institute for Research on Women and Gender and the Kellogg Community Health Scholars Program.