Meeting Recap 1.27.09

I. Food education
We set Friday, Feb 13th to start our food/garden education program for youth in the Grant Houses Afterschool Program, which will tentatively run every Friday afternoon. Thanks to Gracie and Sarah for keeping in touch with Leanna about this! Everyone’s task is to research food and garden education information we can use to devise a curriculum for the semester. Think about what you would/could teach in an hour with Grant Houses youth.

II. Budget & Funding
a. Thanks to Ed for proposing a rubric for a project pitch to use to ask for funding. Nadia, Saskia, Rickie, and Ed are piecing this together, and Becky will contribute relevant information/photos. Once we have a finished product we will take it to potential donors and sponsors including area businesses, academic departments, and other campus groups.
b. Sarah is heading the charge for a fundraising dinner. She’ll contact Laura and Leslie to discuss this further, and we’ll all talk about it next Tuesday.
c. Grants: below is a list of the grants submitted, signed up for, and remaining to be completed. If you haven’t submitted one and have been working on the project since we started distributing grants, please sign up for one. I’ll send out a revised budget for anyone about to submit one within the next few days. Also, it would be great for anyone who can to research statistical (health, income, etc.) info about the neighborhood so we can include that information in our grant applications, as Saskia noted.

Captain Planet Grant (Submitted)--Tabitha and Becky
Healthy Sprouts Grant (received!)—Saskia
Filter For Good Grant (submitted, turned down)--Becky
Project Orange Thumb (not submitted-due 2/17)--?
Home Depot Garden Grant (submitted)—Julia
Columbia Sustainable Campus (submitted)—Andrew, Hannah
Diversity Initiative Grant (not submitted)—Theo
Office of Univ. Chaplain Co-sponsorship Fund (not submitted, due 2/13)—Laura
Do Something Grant (not submitted)—Rickie, Gracie
Citizens Committee for New York (not submitted, due 3/14)—Laura
G-Unity Foundation Grant (not submitted, due 3/15)--?
Jenny Jones Grant (not submitted)--?

III. Community Connections
a. Next Tuesday at 10:30am Becky is meeting with the senior council of Community Board 9 (CB9) to discuss the Grant Garden project and their proposed senior reading garden. The meeting will take place at George Bruce Library downstairs, 518 W 125th St. Everyone is welcome to join.
b. Becky is going to contact Sarah Martin (Tenants Assoc. Pres.), Rob Bennaton (NYCHA Gardens coordinator), and Ernestine Welch (CB9 Senior Committee) to propose setting up a lunch where we can all touch base and chat informally about the garden and the Grant Houses. Date/time not set, but anyone will be welcome.

IV. Meeting time
From now on we will meet Tuesdays from 8-9pm at Rickie’s apartment. The doorman will have a list of names of people to let in—bring some I.D.