LA Can builds community trust and food security through urban gardening, emphasizing that the most impacted individuals hold the best solutions. Their Skid Row rooftop garden demonstrates how cultivating trust before crops fosters sustained engagement, leveraging ancestral knowledge to strengthen cultural connections. By integrating with local food coalitions and ensuring leadership from those with lived experience, LA Can creates sustainable, community-driven initiatives.
Urban food insecurity disproportionately affects marginalized communities, where systemic barriers limit access to fresh, culturally relevant food. LA Can’s approach addresses this gap by combining practical gardening skills with organizing strategies that empower residents to lead solutions. Their model shows how food justice work can bridge immediate needs with long-term systemic change.
This post examines LA Can’s key strategies: building trust as a foundation for participation, restoring ancestral food practices, and collaborating with broader food justice networks. We’ll explore actionable insights for replicating their success in other underserved neighborhoods.
Readers will gain practical steps to establish trust-based community gardens, integrate cultural food knowledge, and partner with existing organizations to maximize impact.
By Matthew Enloe and Todd Cunningham | Cerca Cultivation
TL;DR – Quick Summary
Discover how LA Can builds trust and community through urban gardening and food security initiatives.
Community Empowerment: LA Can emphasizes the importance of involving the most impacted individuals in finding solutions, fostering community empowerment and trust.
Trust Building: The organization’s rooftop garden in Skid Row has become a powerful tool for breaking down barriers and building trust among residents.
Sustained Engagement: Key advice: Before growing crops, focus on building trust and rapport with the community, which fuels sustained participation and engagement.
Cultural Connection: LA Can leverages ancestral knowledge and traditional practices to connect people emotionally and culturally to the food they grow, enhancing community buy-in.
Collaborative Impact: Collaborate with existing food-oriented organizations and coalitions to integrate your garden space into broader food security efforts, maximizing impact.
Pro tip: Ensure that people with lived experience lead the initiatives, not just participate, to build sustainable and effective community-driven projects.
Empowering Communities Through Inclusive Leadership
Matthew: Those collaborative efforts reflect the values of LA Can and the community that you serve. And it was almost like you were like, I know it’s taking a while, like, sorry. And I was like, dude, don’t be sorry. Like the fact that we’re doing it this way makes it more meaningful and just makes me want to like. Todd Cunningham: Years. Matthew Enloe: Be like, yes, like, I agree, take your time, take the time to ask, like, the folks involved, vet me, see, make sure that I have a fit. So I was thinking about that. Todd Cunningham: That’s what we get. Yes, the people who are most,. We believe that the people most impacted are the ones who have solutions to the problems. And that is something we want to be empowering people with in a big way. here’s you mentioned there. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, yeah, the people,. Say that again, the people who are impacted, most impacted. Todd Cunningham: Most impacted are the people who. Are the very people who have the best solutions and know the way forward for what they want to what needs to happen. So we look to that that’s why community is so critical. And every step along the way, it’s like in terms of defining how we design our gardens, our farms, to the relationships that we have, to who we listen to who we trust, trust is such a huge.
Building Trust in Community Spaces
Todd: Part of this, we haven’t even mentioned that, but it’s like that’s a common through point through line through all this. And having a line of sight from like where you are to where you want to go is really, you know, it’s mandatory. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, yeah. And even just walking around or doing other sort of, like, support work on skid row, like, you see that folks have a, like, they have to for their own protections have walls up to to let someone even to receive any sort of, like, sometimes it feels like even just like walking by and like a smile. It’s like, why are you smiling? Like,. But which like is fair, right? Like who knows. Right, right. Matthew Enloe: What the intentions are. But when people come up onto the rooftop, it’s like all of that trust building happened so quick where they’re in the garden space. And it’s like, you guys have made a whole thing that helps build that trust and that buy-in of the folks living in and around Skid Row. And I see it so much on the garden and maybe there’s something that I don’t know. Tell me is that like across all of it? Is that something special for the garden that those walls come down so fast? Is that is rock alley can? Todd Cunningham: It’s across the lake. And it really is. I mean it comes directly from our leader, our co-founder, our founder rather, sorry, our founder Pete White who is our executive director. Absolutely, he has nurtured that and gendered it and made sure that was it here from the very beginning.
It is all about trust and about making sure that we are listening and we are including your voice and that our voices are together. We’re like bringing forward things to build our own power, build our individual power, but also community power. NECA is reinforced at the committee levels as well as at the across the organization level too. Matthew Enloe: So it’s not just the garden, it’s the whole Oregon. I mean, like, I, I love being up there on the roof. I want to take some time. We’re approaching the end to make sure that we can give some sort of like some of. No, it’s everything. Matthew Enloe: The guidance or even just examples of what has worked for setting up this garden space to work as a tool for organizing work for community building. So what advice would you give to anyone wanting to start a community-driven growing space in an underserved neighborhood area? Is there any advice that comes to mind? Anything that’s worked for you? Todd Cunningham: Some very basic, yes, some very basic things are, one is just grow trust before you grow crops. It’s important that you, that we, you know who you’re, you’re, you may not know exactly who you’re going to be targeting or who you want to engage, but it’s important that you establish trust and have a great rapport with people because that’s what’s going to actually. Fuel the interest in coming back again and the interest in interacting from people on the other side. It’s like they’re going to want to participate if there’s trust there. Because just growing crops, we see this all the time. Gardening, mean, many people watching your podcast probably know this.
It’s like lots of people are really excited about gardening in the beginning, but after two or three weeks, it’s like, it’s not moving fast enough or they’ve got other things which are competing for their attention. growing crops can be left to somebody else’s, somebody else’s, not that those somebody else’s are any less valuable than anyone else’s, it’s just that they are not, they don’t find there’s not a connection there. And so growing trust is a fundamental piece. We also find that like, you know, because food is so central and vital to all of us, that we also have years and years and years of experience behind us that we could tap, you know,. Kind of restoring those ancestral practices. And these days, those things are in high demand. It’s like people are very interested in that. And especially as we find more and more issues around vaccines being questioned and chemicals being questioned and the lack of understanding about the origins of where the foods that we’re eating come from, lots of big claims being made and then being debunked a couple of years later. we can look to our ancestors to actually help to lay out a plan for us and having people making sure that we’re honoring those we respect them and we respect the the cultures of the people that we’re dealing with and often in again like I mentioned earlier in disenfranchised communities it is often a very frequent experience that people are dismissed and then no one’s even caring to bother to ask like what their. Culture is, what their heritage is all about, and their level of understanding about it either. Every seed that we plant comes with a question.
It’s not literally this, but just how are we organizing around this? Whether it’s a plant where people want to grow it because they just love the taste of it, there’s an emotional connection already there. And how can we use that emotional connection to actually further conversations about other things that are happening? Matthew Enloe: Bringing coalitions if you have other kind of food growing or food oriented coalitions that are doing similar kind of work. They don’t many times those guys don’t have a garden or they don’t have a kind of food component to what they’re doing. So we do that with our coalition for the California Hunger Action Coalition Chalk. It’s a statewide coalition and also Hunger Action LA which is a LA based coalition of food providers. Matthew Enloe: Food banks, community-based organizations as well. one last thing I would say is to be sure that you’re, you are listening to and giving opportunities for people with lived experience to lead. act, not just participate, but lead. Leadership is so critical in this. If it’s all on you, you’ll be exhausted all the time and you will miss things and you will, it just, can’t be done by one person. This is all. We’re all in this together. get our food together. We share all these. Matthew Enloe: Can tell. Me that you get tired sometimes, Todd? Todd Cunningham: Yeah, a little bit sometimes. Yeah, but it’s like, yeah, it’s like, it’s not just about participation. It’s really about training people to lead. And, you know, all of us are eager to learn things and to share. And then of course, the natural human behavior is once you learn something is you want to share it with other people.
So, you know, and then of course, further down the road is like being able to push that conversation. Matthew Enloe: Me too. Todd Cunningham: Beyond gardening into like food assistance, food legislation, equity, making sure that everyone’s getting what it is that they need and not basically how it’s been decided by other governmental forces. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, yeah. So I think like the what I’m sort of just like. Unpack a little bit of like what we said as advice for folks who are trying to build community-based garden spaces is one, build trust before, grow trust before you grow crops. Two is access the generations that have come before, access that ancestral knowledge. Three, honor it. Todd Cunningham: And honor it. Matthew Enloe: Three was to look for folks who are already working in the food, like policy food, activism. You were talking about how you’re working with orgs that are focused on food security. And. Todd Cunningham: Yeah, to focus on yes,. In the food system. that could be a retailer, it be a retailer, it could be a distributor of food, it could be a food policy organization. There are also legal aid organizations. Matthew Enloe: Right, because garden space,. Yeah, the garden space that you’re trying to build could fit in as a missing component into their activities. So you could have further benefit outside of just what you’re focusing on directly. It’s like there might be areas or organizations that might need you that you don’t even at the beginning know that you could serve them in a special way. And as we were wrapping up, there something beyond? Am I missing one? I was trying really hard to. Yeah, asking people with lived experience. To lead. People with lived experience to lead.
Yeah, very, very important. And just stay on top of what’s happening. Be alert. Be aware, because there are decisions being made, you know, that are not, they’re not running out to like hear us. They’re not running out to like say, what do you think about this? It’s like they’re making decisions without us. And.
Excitement in Recent and Future Garden Projects
Matthew: Leadership. Todd Cunningham: Our voices are critical. have to be, we have to make public comment. We have to be aware of what is happening. And one way to do that is making sure that community is involved because it’s gonna force you to. Matthew Enloe: Yeah. Well, this, I knew this conversation was going to be a blast. I’m really glad I didn’t forget. As we’re coming towards the end of the conversation, I have a surprise question for you, which is the question that I want to ask everyone who’s on the podcast. What’s something that you’ve grown recently that’s excited you? Todd Cunningham: No. Okay, besides lamb’s ear, which I talked about earlier and that one that really excited me, being able to grow mustard greens, I didn’t know, I you know, I didn’t know how much I loved them. I thought that I’ve had mustard greens my whole life and mixed them with other kinds of greens. My mom cooked them, you know, from being from the south. It’s like greens were a regular part of our diet, but.
Todd: Mustard greens and being able to grow them differently, both in the ground and the soil and also like in the towers so they grow more speedily. We can get more food, more good food to people faster. That’s exciting. That’s an exciting food for me, like recently. But lamb’s ear is probably at the top. Matthew Enloe: Yeah, I love. At the top. As people who grow do a lot of growing, like you can’t say like, what’s your favorite plant to grow? You know, because like, you’re like, I don’t know, how do I pick? But what I like asking, what’s something that’s excited you that you’ve grown recently? Or what I ask folks who haven’t, who are just getting started, is what’s something you’re excited to grow? But mustard greens is great. Is there anything you’re excited to grow? Todd Cunningham: Uh so many things. I don’t I don’t even know how I’d call what I would say about that because there’s I’m learning about new plants all the time as well from you from us folks in our community we’re constantly coming up with new herbs and not even they’re not new herbs but like for herbs that we aren’t yet growing we have about 25 different herbs that we’re growing up there up on a rooftop farm now.
Matthew: Or just all of it. Todd Cunningham: But we’re doing seasonal kinds of things as well, eventually turning those into products and things we can drink and enjoy and heal ourselves. So that’s an area that’s great exploration for us and for me. Matthew Enloe: Well, that’s one of the best things about gardening is you just always get to learn always get to explore All right. Well, I think we’re reaching the end Todd. Thank you so so much This has been a blast you have been an awesome first guest.
Todd: Thank you so much. Thank you. sure saying. All the.
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