It's no secret that food scarcity is still a major problem, not only in foreign countries, but right here in the U.S. A problem so systemic demands only one response: Bold Moves. And that's exactly what the people at Sweet Water Foundation have taken.
Rooted in the heart of one of America's most distressed cities—Chicago—the Sweet Water Foundation is dedicated to educating its community about sustainable agriculture, urban renewal, environmental conservation, and economic development. On a more fundamental level, the group’s goal is to provide a sustainable source of fresh and local food for the city's poverty-stricken south and west sides.
Sweet Water aims to combat what is known as “food deserts,” which they describe as “any area of any city that has absolutely no fresh food" (or whose alleged such food has been shipped in from far overseas, counteracting the basic principle of “fresh”). That kind of importing is unsustainable, while what Executive Director Emmanuel Pratt and the Sweet Water crew is doing is entirely sustainable, considering it literally happens in their back yards.
"Cucumbers to corn, cabbage of all different kinds. ...You can grow it in the city of Chicago, in an abandoned, vacant lot," says Janella Curtis, the group’s head of Community Outreach. And we’re not talking about sparse amounts of nourishment here, either. Pratt says that, over the course of a cycle, the group can harvest up to 5,000 pounds of food per acre.
To learn more about the Sweet Water Foundation’s bold moves to combat hunger and build stronger communities, be sure to watch the riveting video above.
