Big win for school gardens ... What's next?!?

[Ethan X]

Dear all school garden leaders and supporters,

Congratulations on a fantastic victory, and thanks for all your votes!

In case you missed the news, early this week our friends at Change.org officially announced that we are WINNERS of the 2010 "Ideas for Change in America" competition! Our idea, "Good Food For All Kids: A Garden at Every School," gained over 4,000 votes and finished the contest in 7th place. Along with the other Top 10 ideas, this means our idea will now receive support from Change.org to become an actual grassroots national campaign.

On Tuesday this week, I participated in my first conference phone call with directors of Change.org to begin mapping out how the vision of Universal School Gardens can now be best transformed into action.

Here's what I learned. Basically, there are 3 specific ways that Change.org is offering to help:

1) First, Change.org will reach out directly to relevant decision-makers in the United States government. Next week in Washington, DC I will have my first meeting in person with the Political Director of Change.org to begin defining our strategy for direct engagement with officials in the White House, U.S. Congress, and Departments of Agriculture and Education.

2) Second, Change.org will enable their website to be used for targeted political activism in support of our objective. For example, this could mean collecting petition signatures to request that members of Congress include $100 million in mandatory funding for school gardens in their next Farm Bill. Or it could mean sending letters to a local government official encouraging him to reverse a decision that effectively bans school gardens. Fortunately, we have the option of doing multiple actions! I would love to hear your ideas for any other kinds of actions that we could take.

3) Third, Change.org will feature a series of stories about school gardens on their blog. These stories can be written either by the regular Change.org editors or by guest writers -- such as me and you! Do you have an idea for an interesting story about school gardens that you'd like to see published? You can pitch your idea to me and the Change.org team, and then if you're passionate and knowledgeable about the subject, you can even write it yourself!

So now ... What's next?

Well, immediately, I would really love to gain more feedback from grassroots school garden and sustainable food leaders across the United States.

That's why next week we are going to facilitate a follow-up conference call between myself, the Change.org team, and a number of local leaders across the country who want to help build this national campaign.

If YOU are interested in joining this call and adding your voice to the discussion, please RSVP with me by sending me a message by email to schoolgardens...@gmail.com. Please understand that this call next week is open ONLY to individuals who are already active with school gardens, youth leadership and/or sustainable food in your local community. At a later time, we will certainly have other opportunities for new leaders to get involved and share your voices too!

Finally, I want to acknowledge the ambitiousness of this campaign. If these 3 courses of action that I've outlined above are all that this campaign succeeds at doing, that alone could be a huge benefit to the school gardens movement. But I see no reason why we can't do even more! Can we help extend school gardening networks to every state in the USA? Can we start a national school garden teachers association? Can we present a national challenge through which school districts would race each other to be the first to achieve universal school gardens?

There's really no limit to the possibilities of what we might achieve by dreaming and working together! If you'd like to learn more about some of the inspiring work on school gardens that many folks are already doing, you're welcome to check out the "School Gardens Across America" Facebook group at http://www.facebook.com/home.php?#!/group.php?gid=323041926571&ref=mf

As spring starts this year, I hope you're as excited as me about this opportunity to sprout even more school gardens, and in the process more deeply engage the next generations with the joys and challenges of sustainable agriculture. By being involved in your local community to help increase the impact of school gardens, you can ensure that this movement keeps growing (beyond your computer screen!). Please let me know if you have any questions, and I would love to hear any other ideas about building this campaign for universal school gardens.

Thanks and sincerely,
Ethan Genauer
email: SchoolGardens...@gmail.com

ps - Special thanks to everyone who actively supported this campaign and helped turn out the votes to win! I know there's lots of folks who deserve thanks, but I want to send out super-duper recognition to these organizations who helped mobilize and publicize the vote: White House Organic Farm Project, Food Democracy Now!, Slow Money, Real Food Challenge, Kitchen Gardeners International, Organic Consumers Association, Civil Eats, and DC Food For All ... Last but not least, thanks to the team at Change.org for their genuine excitement in taking this campaign on!