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What Kale and Arugula Have to Do with Reducing Recidivism in Miami, Florida
Urban Greenworks executive-cirector James Jiler and Roger Horne, director of community health relations, share some freshly picked fruit from Cerasee Farm. See more photos of inner city gardens in Miami here. Photos by Ryan Stone.
This group is soothing inner-city tensions, spade in hand.
By Chris Peak
Nation Swell
June 18, 2015
Excerpt:
It’s mango season in Miami, and James Jiler’s kitchen counter keeps filling with bags and bags of the tropical fruit. The towering mound accumulates nearly faster than he can slice the mangos apart or blend them together in a summer daiquiri.
Tasty as the fresh fruit is already, it’s even sweeter to Jiler because of where it comes from: many of the mangoes were nurtured and picked by at-risk youth, halfway house residents and the formerly incarcerated. As the executive director of Urban Greenworks, Jiler provides green jobs and environmental programs like planting in urban spaces or science education in schools to troubled residents of Miami. Since the organization’s start in 2010, roughly 55 people have been employed by the nonprofit, plus hundreds more have served as volunteers.
“Every time we plant a cluster of native trees, we create a little, cool sanctuary, or a butterfly garden or a natural habitat for the endangered Dade pine that was once there 150 years ago,” Jiler says. “My philosophy is to change one person, one garden, one community at a time.”
Read the complete article here.
This group is soothing inner-city tensions, spade in hand. Passion fruit vines cling to a chainlink fence surrounding a lush oasis of fruit trees, vegetable planters and palms in the midst of inner-city Miami. The garden, Cerasee Farm, is a project of Urban Greenworks, a Miami-based nonprofit using agriculture to bring opportunity and healthy food to underprivileged communities.
Source: http://www.cityfarmer.info/2015/07/03/what-kale-and-arugula-have-to-do-with-reducing-recidivism-in-miami-florida/
