Multicultural Community Center (MCC) Healing and Learning Garden - Phase 1
Project Sponsor: Multicultural Community Center (MCC)
TGIF Grant: $2,000
Project Theme: Agriculture and Food Justice
Project Description: The MCC Healing and Learning Garden (MCCHLG) project aims to transform the underused patio area on the north side of the MCC (located inside MLK, Jr. Student Union) with accessible raised bed planter boxes. They will plant herbal and edible cultivars that the multicultural community, students, and staff can use for stress reduction from everyday events, anxieties, and to improve their overall sense of well-being on campus. Additionally, the MCCHLG aims to grow produce that student gardeners and community members can use to increase their food security.
Project Goals:
- Create an educational and healing space on-campus; specifically, the MCCHLG wants to prioritize this as a healing space for people of color, womyn, queer and/or trans folks, and other marginalized communities who experience race, gender, sexuality, and intersectional identity based anxiety, hostility, and oppression
- Provide opportunities for Berkeley and Bay Area communities to come together to learn, grow, share, and access knowledge about the practice of gardening and the use of herbs and plants once harvested
- Transform the landscape of campus and positively impact the psychological, emotional, and spiritual wellbeing of students on campus
- Provide space for low-income youth of color to engage with urban gardening; to (re)visualize how to their neighborhoods and communities can be enhanced (which are often concrete landscapes, much like the MCC patio) and transform them into areas filled with vibrant botany