• Objective:

  • Create a community garden on campus to provide a source of food for students on the Grand Valley State University campus who are suffering from food insecurity.

• Background:

  • Food insecurity impacts approximately 1 in every 3 college students. Our hope is to aid the students impacted by this on Grand Valley's campus, and insure that they have access to a reliable source for nutritious and beneficial foods.

  • Combating Food Insecurity:

    • We want to provide a garden that is open to every student at Grand Valley, but hope that students who are not in need of a free source of food will opt not to take too much from the garden. This way, an abundant amount of nutritious food is left for students suffering from food insecurity. The purpose of allowing all students access to the garden is to allow for food insecure students to provide for themselves without feeling embarrassed.

    • Creating a community:

      • An additional advantage of creating an on campus garden would be the creation of a space for students to interact with each other. By building a garden that is accessible to all Grand Valley students, interaction between students visiting the garden is inevitable. The goal is to create relationships between students (possibly between students suffering from similar issues, although not limited to this) and build a community through this garden while providing nutritious food to those in need.

• Background:

  • Food insecurity among college students is a major issue on campuses across the country. One third of all college students suffer from food insecurity. The main reason for this being that students lack the means or access to nutritious food. This means that students may lack the finances necessary to afford adequate food which provides the necessary nutrients. Food insecurity includes students who can afford enough food to meet the recommended 2,000 calories a day if the food consumed by these students does not proved the necessary nutrients. College students are at a higher risk of being food insecure due to the fact that most students do not have the time to work enough hours to make ends meet. The amount of hours necessary to go to school full time and pass classes often does not allow for students to have full time jobs.

  • Process:

    • Immersion: Before coming up with any ideas, our class as a whole attended a presentation about Replenish. During this presentation we learned about what food insecurity is and what challenges students who have this issue face. The presentation was truly eye opening about how wide spread of an issue food insecurity is among college students. It inspired our group to come up with creatvie ways to combat this issue.

    • Ideation: After hearing about the different options people proposed in order to combat food insecurity among the students attending Grand Valley State University our group weighed the pros and cons of each option. After debating the options we came to the conclusion that a community garden would be more effective to combat food insecurity. We felt that putting a community garden on campus would help bring healthy and nutritious food to students, especially those who live on campus. The community garden would be close to housing and easy to access.

    • Implementation: Although this idea has yet to implemented on campus at Grand Valley State University our group has an idea of how we believe this would go. The garden would be available to all students although those who meet the requirements will have access to plots in order to plant their own crops. In addition to this students who qualify as food insecure would have first access to the harvest. Ideally the garden would be located near housing to make it easier for students to access.

• To combat food insecurity among the students at Grand Valley State University, we propose the creation of of a sustainable community garden. This garden would be large enough to help students in need of access to nutritious food. Community gardens have been known as a reliable method used to combat food insecurity. We believe that an empty plot of land, such as the back field of Holten- Hooker, would be a logical location for the community garden. This plot of land has adequate space for a garden that is 50 feet wide by 150 feet long (the dimensions for the garden can vary depending on if the garden needs to be larger or smaller).

• Some foods that we propose planting in the garden include but are not limited to:

  • • Cabbage

    • Potatoes

    • Strawberries

    • Blueberries

    • Tomatoes

    • Onions

• We plan to have the community garden available to all students but students who are suffering from food insecurity would have priority access to the food in the garden. This special access would include access to plots in the garden to grow their own food, and first access to food that can be harvested from the garden. In order to achieve this level of access students would need to fill out a form to see if they meet the requirements of a food insecure student.

Our next steps to move forward with this project would include:

• Finding funds to start up and maintain the garden which could be money from the university or money raised by fundraiser/donation

• Finding consistent volunteers

• Possibly finding a faculty member who would want to oversee the project long-term

• Developing the criteria for deciding which students have priority access to the garden

• Getting the project approved by the university

• Develop a planting calendar/schedule for volunteers to follow (example below, using information from Old Farmer's Almanac).