Parks and People grant workshop

Posting this one a little late: attended a workshop about a week ago at Parks and People (in the unexpectedly cool neighborhood behind Johns Hopkins) on how to apply for grants for community gardens. There were all sorts of people there--schoolteachers, other college students, retired couples, young activists, middle-aged folk fed up with the slab of concrete across the street. One man planned to use his grand award money to borrow a jackhammer to break up some concrete, and wondered who to give the pieces to. Another wanted to create an edible garden, but wasn't sure where to get plant donations. Others didn't know how to get access to running water for the site.

The workshop lasted two hours and was given by several people, all young and enthusiastic Parks and People people (Christine was one of them!). (They seem very much like Goucher kids about two or three years from now. Are we the green generation, or what? I tell you!) The key item, for us, was that the grant-getting process is a long one. This step alone is big enough to delay our project until mid-March at the earliest--when the awards arrive--and likely a month or more beyond. On the application for the grant itself, we have to demonstrate several things: that we have community support for this project, we have a rough budget worked out, we have a schematic of our garden sketched out, we are in touch with a group who will take over responsibility for the garden after we're gone, the lot is rightfully ours, and other details.