On February 2, 2010, Promotores Unidas para la Educacion Nacional de Tecnologías Sostenibles (PUENTES) welcomed a highly qualified group – Patricia Miller-Battiste, Eleazar Caballero, Marcy Hachman, Rey Ledesma, Mark Stebbins, Maria Mendez, and Dale Sanders – to participate in the Citizen’s Advisory Committee for their Community Supported Garden project.
Stockton is one of California’s fastest growing cities, “with a dynamic, multi-ethnic and multi-cultural population of over 260,000” (City of Stockton). City government is aggressively re-vitalizing the city’s downtown; yet, as a result of the cumulative effects of poverty, acculturation, and inequality, Stockton’s population (which is over 50 percent minority) faces serious food security issues.
Fewer than 15 percent of school children in our community eat the recommended servings of fruit, and less than 20 percent eat the recommended servings of vegetables, and over 44,000 families in San Joaquin County receive less than 3 three meals per day. Furthermore, one of the primary concerns in public schools is the increasing obesity among school children who daily fill themselves with unhealthy, and empty, calories!
Composed of seven established community leaders, the Citizen’s Advisory Committee will help PUENTES increase access to healthy food and physical activity at the neighborhood level by teaming up with the City of Stockton to develop a Community Supported Garden program that will not just provide affordable, culturally acceptable produce to underserved neighborhoods; it will help families provide that service for themselves.