Friendship Trays - Garden Party Saturday 10/13/12

Friendship Gardens.

If you have not yet heard about Friendship Trays and its many affiliate programs, you are truly missing out on a vital community organization in Charlotte and a worthwhile volunteer and donation opportunity. Friendship Trays provides meals - cost is based on income and ranges from nothing to $4.50 - to people of any age who are unable to prepare a healthy meal and have no resource to help them do so. Most people pay less than $1 per meal and volunteers make up the bulk of the manpower that runs this daily operation. The program receives no government funding and counts on donations and a huge volunteer effort to keep going. 

An affiliate garden program called Friendship Gardens, which is a partnership between Slow Food Charlotte and Friendship Trays, helps people start community gardens and accepts donations back from the gardens, including local, fresh foods in the delivered meals. 

Friendship Gardens is hosting its annual fundraiser, a fun Autumn Garden Party, this Saturday October 13, 2012, including food, music, dancing and mischief in the garden. Tickets are $50 and you can buy them online or pay when you arrive. Registration is here. 

To donate to Friendship Trays, click here. 

Also on site is the Community Culinary School of Charlotte (CCSC), which trains unemployed individuals, including some former offenders, to cook and offers help with resume building and interview skills so that graduates are sure to find permanent positions in the culinary field. 

Encore Catering, which grew out of the CCSC and is also on site at the same facility as Friendship Trays, uses students and graduates to prepare food for all sorts of events including weddings. Their rates are competitive and from what I hear, the food is excellent.

Please check out these great organizations and the other Friendship Trays partners - there is so much available on the website. You can also arrange to tour the facility as I did - trust me, you will be impressed with the organization and the direct effect on the community that is obvious when you learn how many folks benefit from Friendship Trays and its affiliates.

More than 800 active clients receive meals from Friendship Trays with 550 - 650 meals being delivered every day! I love this map, which shows all of the clients served and the routes.

Meals are delivered in two parts. Above, the salad/fruit/bread tray, which does not need to be warmed.

The main dish of the day, which is delivered cold and heated up by the client.

Busy at work in the kitchen preparing the meals. Both volunteers and full time employees make this operation possible. Students at the Community Culinary School of Charlotte take 14 week classes and some work in the Friendship Trays kitchen.

Fresh peppers delivered from one of the many community gardens.

Friendship Trays partners with many community organizations including the Community Culinary School of Charlotte and Encore Catering. 

Lots happens at 2401 Distribution Street! Volunteering and/or donating is a great way to help our community. If you would like to volunteer, 125 drivers are needed every day to fulfill 94 routes and kitchen volunteers are also needed.

Contact Lani Lawrence at llawrence@friendshiptrays.org to volunteer.

Another view of Friendship Gardens.

Gardens and Parks

Gardens
Yesterday I went on a tour of North Philadelphia with other legal interns who are working in the public interest sector. While I have been to North Philly a couple of times for work and once when my Mom and I were looking for Mount Airy, this was a great opportunity to see some of the positive things that are going on in an area that is stereotypically thought of as drug infested and dangerous. While there is obvious poverty in North Philly, there have been quite a few recent efforts to organize the various communities. Some of the most beautiful revitalization projects are the many murals found all over the city and the community gardens, which can be found throughout areas that are often otherwise devoid of greenery.
The highlight of the tour (other than the horses that belong to the so-called "Black Cowboys" of Philadelphia) was a community garden called Groupos Motivos which was started by a group of Puerto Rican immigrants who wanted to take back their neighborhood. This garden is actually several gardens encompassing a few blocks near the corner of 2nd Street and Susquehanna Street in the New Kensington section of the city. We toured the gardens and enjoyed a scrumptious lunch prepared by the women who run the garden: rice and beans, chicken cooked in a tomato, olive and potato sauce, fried plantains, mashed yucca, a gorgeous salad from the garden and cake with strawberries and blueberries. The lunch tasted even more delicious after a full morning of touring!
After lunch we went to Greensgrow Farms, located in the Kensington neighborhood at Cumberland Street and Gaul Street. The idea behind the farm is that produce for the city can be grown in the city. The farms supplies directly to individuals as well as to area restaurants and also brings in farm products from other farmers in the area. I bought some blueberries, a green pepper and a cucumber!
Overall, the tour was very interesting. It was definitely great to meet some of the people who are making a change in their own communities. While there is still a long way to go - particularly in the realm of housing - there are certainly improvements being made all the time. If you haven't been to North Philadelphia - check it out!!

Parks
Today I met my cousin Annie, her boyfriend and another friend of theirs who are all currenty clerking for federal judges in Philadelphia. We met up at Washington Square, a Stephen Starr joint that is, not surprisingly, adjacent to the park of the same name. We sat outside on the very trendy deck that has couches and I had an apple mojito and a first rate cheeseburger with avocado salad. It was nice to hear about the clerking experience and to know that all this work I am doing in applying for clerkships will be well worth it.
I am still just enjoying being near such a city! I like walking around even when things are closed, but of course I pick the one day things aren't open to want to buy something. I am going to have to make it a point to do some after work shopping one day soon.