The Summer of Solutions program has been getting youth engaged in cool projects all over the country, and in Austin we’ve been working with low income neighborhoods east of I-35 trying to figure out what people want, what they need, and how we can best serve their interests.

A lot of our work has focused on energy efficiency in homes, but another really important movement growing on the east side is locally produced food.  We organized a workday at the Montopolis Community Center where staffers have been maintaining a few garden plots benefiting the WIC Program (WIC stands for Women, Infants, and Children).

Meet a few of the great folks who came out and helped us rebuild this garden:

Summer of Solutions – Montopolis Community Garden from Public Citizen on Vimeo.

To learn more about other local food projects going on in Austin, check out the Sustainable Food Center, Green Corn Project, and Resolution Gardens, all of which have helped us out in one way or another this summer.

We had a good time at the workday, and we’re going back next week to host a free gardening class to help the locals maintain this garden or start their own.  We’re also planning to help install new garden beds at Faith Presbyterian Church with help from Resolution Gardens, and have been working with the Rosewood Community Center on installing some garden space there.  

We’re still learning as we go, and we’re hoping to find enough volunteers to make Summer of Solutions into a year-round program. If you’re interested in these kinds of projects and you live in Texas, email trevor.lovell[at]gmail.com to get more involved. If you live outside of Texas, visit the Summer of Solutions page linked at the top of this post.