THE GREENING OF A FOOD DESERT: Building Community through Community Food Production

A collaboration between

The Puerto Rican Cultural Center and Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School with the generous support of The Chicago Community Trust

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Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS 2

PROJECTSUMMARY 3

COMMUNITYPROFILE 5

DESIGNATIONASAFOODDESERT 5COMMUNITYVIBRANCYANDRESILIENCE 6

LEADORGANIZATIONS 9

THEPUERTORICANCULTURALCENTER 9PEDROALBIZUCAMPOSHIGHSCHOOL 11

OTHERKEYPARTNERS 12

CO­OPHUMBOLDTPARK(COMMUNITYORGANIZINGFOROBESITYPREVENTION) 12THEINSTITUTEOFPUERTORICANARTANDCULTURE 13THECHICAGOPARKDISTRICT 13THECHICAGOBOTANICGARDEN 13UIUCGRADUATESCHOOLOFLIBRARYANDINFORMATIONSCIENCE 14UIUCOFFICEOFEXTENSIONANDOUTREACH 14

RECREATINGTHEBUILTENVIRONMENTTOFOSTERCOMMUNITYFOODPRODUCTION 16

ESSENTIALCOMPONENTSOFTHEINITIATIVE 17

“SÍSEPUEDO”COMMUNITYEDUCATIONANDENGAGEMENT 17HEALTHANDNUTRITIONCAMPAIGN 17JUNIORMASTERGARDENERPROGRAM 17GREENCOLLARPIPELINE 18“COSECHALOTUYO”COMMUNITYFOODPRODUCTIONANDDISTRIBUTION 18URBANOASISEDIBLEGARDENANDCOMMUNITYFARM 18ROOFTOPGREENHOUSES 20BACKYARDANDCOMMUNITYGARDENS 20HEALTHFULLIFESTYLES 21COORDINATIONOFCULTIVATION 22MARKETINGANDDISTRIBUTION 22CONTINUOUSEVALUATIONANDPLANNING 23

SELF­SUSTAINABILITY 23

PROJECTGOALSANDINTENDEDOUTCOMES 24

WORKSCITED 25

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A collaboration between

The Puerto Rican Cultural Center and

Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School

with the generous support of

The Chicago Community Trust

March 2011

This report was written and produced by:

Carlos R. DeJesús, M.A. Educational Leadership Assistant Director, Pedro Albizu Campos High School

and

Michelle L. Torrise, MLIS University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign

Graduate School of Library and Information

THE GREENING OF A FOOD DESERT: Building Community through Community Food Production

Rosalva Jiménez (above) was in the first corps of students participating in the summer urban agriculture program at Pedro Albizu Campos High School (2007). Rosi and her team made the initial suggestion that the school approach the Chicago Park District about securing land to create an urban farm.

The Puerto Rican Cultural Center 2739 West Division Street

Chicago, Illinois 60622 773 342-8023

www.prcc-chgo.org

Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School 2739 West Division Street

Chicago, Illinois 60622 773 342-8022

www.pedroalbizucamposhs.org

Juan Antonio Corretjer

PuertoRicanCulturalCenter

Founded in 1973, the Juan Antonio Corretjer Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC) is a non-profit, commu-nity-based umbrella institution, which seeks to serve the social and cultural needs of Chicago’s Puerto Ri-can/Latino community. All of the PRCC’s programs encourage participants to think critically about their reality and to promote an ethics of self-reliance based on social responsibility while focusing on health, so-cial, and cultural issues that affect Puerto Rican/Latino and poor communities, such as AIDS, education, liter-acy, housing, homophobia, drug addiction, gang vio-lence, teen pregnancy.

PRCC has been at the fore of the renaissance of the community that has transpired over the past 30 years. The organization’s approach is one of community building based on collaboration designed to address the many exigencies that have plagued the commu-nity.

Dr.PedroAlbizuCamposHighSchool

Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School’s (PACHS) mission is to provide a quality educational experience needed to empower students to engage in critical thinking and social transformation, from the classroom to the Puerto Rican community, based on the philoso-phical foundation of self-determination, a methodology of self-actualization and an ethics of self-reliance.

Since its inception in 1972, PACHS has been serving the Greater Humboldt Park community, addressing an intensely high dropout rate among the community’s youth. The school provides students with a safe, sup-portive environment where they can transform their prior negative educational experiences into positive outcomes. Students are encouraged to reconceptual-ize their perceptions and understanding of themselves and their community in ways that propel them into a life of leadership and accomplishment.

Mural of Juan Antonio Corretjer, Puerto Rican poet, journalist, and political activist, painted by artist Pablo Marcano García on the fa-çade of the Andrés Figueroa Cordero Library and Community Information Center.

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Acknowledgements The Puerto Rican Cultural Center and Pedro Albizu Campos High School wish to express their sincere appreciation for the generous support provided by the following funders who share in our vision for building a healthy, sustainable community in Greater Humboldt Park.

1. The Chicago Community Trust has provided a generous planning grant that has resulted in this publication. The Trust also selected the green-house component of our Initiative as a model to use in its successful request for funding from The Healthy Eating Active Living Convergence Part-nership—a national consortium of funders com-prised of the Kellogg Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Center for Dis-ease Control, Keiser Permanente and others;

2. United Way of Metropolitan Chicago gener-ously provided a three-year grant to address the health disparities that have largely resulted from the community’s food insecurity.

3. Youth Connections Charter School, of which PACHS is an autonomous campus, has provided funding and support for the teaching of the Inte-grated Sciences and Urban Agriculture curricu-lum, and has financed the construction of our pro-totypical greenhouse on the roof of the high school;

4. The John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, through the Local Initiatives Sup-port Corporation’s New Communities Program, has funded our greenhouse feasibility study and our Urban Agriculture summer program;

5. The McCarthey Dressman Foundation has pro-vided a grant for the creation of the Urban Oasis Edible Garden and Community Farm;

6. The Center for Disease Control and Preven-tion’s (CDC) Centers of Excellence in the Elimina-tion of Disparities in Health (CEED) has funded

the Urban Agriculture program through the Uni-versity of Illinois at Chicago’s (UIC) Center Latino Health Research, Training, and Policy Center;

7. The Institute of Puerto Rican Art and Culture has granted us with access to a half acre of the parkland on which the Institute is located to create a culturally consonant and aesthetically pleasing edible garden, with the assistance of the Chicago Botanic Garden;

8. The Chicago Park District will be leasing to us an additional acre of parkland immediately adja-cent to the half acre provided by the Institute of Puerto Rican Art and Culture;

9. The Illinois Department of Commerce and Economic Opportunity, through La Casa Norte, has provided PACHS with funding for the em-ployment of thirty youth in our urban agriculture summer program in 2009;

10. The City of Chicago, through its After School Matters initiative, has been funding our summer and after school urban agriculture program;

11. The Alternative Schools Network has been funding our summer and after school urban agri-culture program, as well; and

12. The Illinois State Board of Education has pro-vided funding for our hydroponics program.

Special acknowledgement and gratitude goes to the students who participated in the summer and after school urban agriculture programs since 2007 who have been engaged in the process of identifying and understanding the community’s needs and then acting upon their new knowledge by creating a vision for a healthy sustainable community.

We also wish to acknowledge the many community residents and local businesses that have been so supportive of ensuring healthy food options for the community. It is because of this collaborative en-gagement that the Greater Humboldt Park Urban Ag-riculture Initiative will continue to grow and prosper.

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Effective solutions to local food security issues, im-proved health outcomes and overall community well-ness must be sustainable and involve all members of a community, especially the youth. As the lead orga-nization PACHS spearheaded the Humboldt Park Ur-ban Agriculture Initiative as an outgrowth of its inte-grated, student-directed, project-based science and math curriculum based on Urban Agriculture. The initiative affirms that our youth are key agents in the process of long-term, sustainable change within the community. Through community inquiry and participa-tory research, vital elements of the initiative were con-ceived of and elaborated by the students themselves. The initiative is designed to further engage youth (from toddlers to teens) in addressing local food needs to ensure that they develop the skills that are necessary and are prepared as adults to take on key roles as leaders of their community. It is also de-

Summary of Initiative Dr. Pedro Albizu Campos High School (PACHS) and the Puerto Rican Cultural Center (PRCC) have devel-oped a comprehensive, multi-faceted, community-wide initiative in urban agriculture. The vision of the Greater Humboldt Park Urban Agriculture Initiative is to develop community self-sufficiency in the produc-tion of key aspects of the community’s nutritional re-serve. The proposed project is designed to address a highly significant health, social and economic issue in our community – the community’s designation as a food desert. Food desert refers to “a neighborhood with no or distant grocery stores [from which to access affordable, fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables] but an abundance of fast food restaurants…" (Gallagher).

Community residents will be actively engaged in the planning and development of the necessary systems of production, distribution and consumption of nutri-tious, culturally defined and community-specific pro-duce in transforming the desert into a fertile oasis. By addressing the need for nutritious, fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables and recognizing the excessively high prevalence of diabetes, obesity, hypertension and coronary disease within the community, the program seeks to inform, engage, and transform the commu-nity environment.

The Initiative is based on the belief that local food needs go beyond simply growing and distributing food.

The Community is the Curriculum

Students who participated in the high school sum-mer program of 2007 led the following community inquiry: “Residents of the Greater Humboldt Park community have poor access to fresh, affordable, locally grown produce that is a part of the Puerto Rican cuisine; what steps can the community take to increase the availability of these foods at affordable prices to local residents?”

Left: Community youth participating in the Urban Agriculture Program prepare a raised garden bed at El Coquí community garden. Students harvest crops like Ají Dulce (right), a Puerto Rican pepper, from community gardens and sell it at affordable prices at El Co-nuco community produce market.

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signed to engage the adults in the community (in-cluding the elderly), many of whom are experienced farmers from Puerto Rico, Mexico and southern United States, or are one generation removed from their agricultural past. The Initiative will team enter-prising students and other nascent urban farmers with the many community residents that have a proud agricultural heritage, to resolve the commu-nity’s nutritional and economic needs—truly a multi-generational approach.

The Initiative is comprised of nine major compo-nents designed to engage the community in the building of a healthy sustainable community that is

self-sufficient in addressing its nutritional and health concerns. The components (graphically represented below) are not a step-by-step approach to community building, but rather an ongoing, fluid approach to identi-fying, evaluating, and addressing the community’s criti-cal needs. The components are described in detail in pages 21 through 27 below.

The Initiative encompasses the germination, cultivation, production, marketing and distribution of locally grown, nutritious food that is free of herbicides, pesticides and other chemical contaminants. The enhanced food pro-duction will be complemented by community education and engagement in nutrition, exercise and overall well-ness.

Components of the Humboldt Park Urban Agriculture Initiative

Greater Humboldt Park Urban Agriculture Initiative

"Sí Se Puede" Community

Education and Engagement

Health and Nutrition

Campaign

Junior Master

Gardeners

Green Collar

Pipeline

"Cosecha Lo Tuyo" Community Food Production and

Distribution

Urban Oasis Edible

Garden and Community

Farm

Rooftop Green-houses

Back Yard and

Community Gardens

El Conuco Produce

Market and La

Cosecha Kioskos

"Muévete" Active Living

Muévete Fitness Options

Ciclo- Urbano

Bicycling Program

Skate Board

Program

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Community Profile The Initiative is designed to serve the Greater Hum-boldt Park community of Chicago, one of the poorest communities in the city. This community is comprised of East Humboldt Park, the western-most park of West Town and the southern-most part of Logan Square.

According to the 2000 Census, there are 38,480 residents in the initiative’s service area, of which 70% are Latino, 18% are African American, and 12% are White.

The community’s median household income of $29,000 is 26% lower than Chicago’s median income. Notably, 31% of community’s residents live below the poverty level, and 17% of households have public as-sistance as the sole source of income. The drop out rate among the community youth is well in excess of 60%. The community is under intense pressure to

stem the tide of gentrification would result in exces-sively high rent burdens, and ultimately displacement. Current rent burdens are already unconscionably high, exceeding 50% of household income.

Designation as a Food Desert In 2006, LaSalle Bank commissioned a report, “Good Food: Examining the Impact of Food Deserts on Pub-lic Health in Chicago,” in which Greater Humboldt Park was identified as being within the boundaries of one of Chicago’s three food deserts. A food desert is a large geographic area in which residents have little to no access to fresh affordable fruits and vegetables. These deserts are also characterized by grocery stores that only sell processed food and by an over-abundance of fast food restaurants. Community resi-dents are afflicted by inordinately high prevalence of

White 12%

African American

18%

Puerto Rican 40%

Mexican 25% Other

Latinos 5%

Population of Greater Humboldt Park

This map of Greater Humboldt Park identifies grocery stores within the Humboldt Park area. Less than 10% of these stores sell fresh produce. Noted the absence of large grocers like a Jewel or a Dominick’s. Source: Maties, D., Gmyrek, K. & Rankis, S. (Autumn 2007). Access to Nutritious Foods and Economic Inequity. Geographic Information Systems II 242 Community Based Mapping Humboldt Park/West Town Project. DePaul University.

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among Puerto Ricans in Humboldt Park is 68 per 100,000 people, a rate that is 172% greater than the national diabetes mortality rate. SUHI also docu-mented the prevalence of hypertension in the commu-nity at 35% (67% higher than that of Chicago’s preva-lence).

obesity, diabetes, hypertension and coronary dis-ease. According to “The Community Survey in Hum-boldt Park: Preventing Obesity and Improving Our Health,” authored by PRCC and other community allies in 2006, 35% of the community’s adults are obese, a rate that is 40% greater than that of adults in the rest of Chicago. Twenty five percent (25%) of adults in Humboldt Park who were either overweight or obese thought that they were at the right weight or even underweight. The Community Survey also found that 50% of the children in the community are obese, and an additional 14% are overweight. The data reinforced the results of a 2002-2003 US Cen-sus population survey that found that 46% of the children in the community were obese and close to 90% of the caretakers of these children did not rec-ognize that their children were at an unhealthy weight.

A study by one of our community partners, Sinai Ur-ban Health Institute (SUHI), titled "Disproportionate Impact of Diabetes in a Puerto Rican Community in Chicago” (published in Journal of Community Health, 2006) indicates that diabetes is exacting an enor-mous toll on the people of Humboldt Park, most no-tably Puerto Ricans. The proportion of adults with diabetes (the prevalence) among Puerto Ricans in this community is 21%, three times higher than the national rate. Even worse, the diabetes mortality rate

0%5%10%15%20%25%

PuertoRicansinGreaterHumboldt

US

Prevalence of Diabetes

0%10%20%30%40%50%60%

Latino Children in Greater Humboldt Park

US Children

Prevalence of Obesity Community Vibrancy and Resilience The paucity of nutritious food in the community, and the resultant sequelae of illnesses, are decimating a community that is otherwise vibrant and resilient. Community residents are becoming well organized and are working assiduously to stave off the en-croachment of gentrification and the resultant dis-placement of families. The degree of civic engage-ment and collaboration with elected officials is high. The level of community building and community de-velopment is exemplary.

In 1993, the local alderman convened a community summit, attended by well over 1,000 residents, to identify community needs and determine priorities. One of the outcomes was the development of the Humboldt Park Empowerment Partnership (HPEP), which is comprised of over 100 community organiza-tions (including PACHS and PRCC), schools, block associations and religious institutions.

The community collaborative was charged with craft-ing a comprehensive, inclusive community develop-ment plan designed to preserve the community and guard against gentrification and displacement. Over

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Bottom: In a citywide study commissioned by LaSalle Bank, East Humboldt Park (which is part of West Town) was designated as a food desert.

Top: The section outlined in blue (see arrows) is the area to be de-veloped as part of the Greater Humboldt Park Urban Agriculture Initiative.

Source: Gallagher, Mari. (2006). Ex-amining the Impact of Food Deserts on Public Health in Chicago.

600 community residents participated in the plan-ning process. A key goal was to empower the community to determine the type of development that is to take place. Key Leaders met with the City’s Planning Commission and secured control of 154 city-owned vacant lots in the area. This victory

significantly impacted the morale and engagement of the residents in the betterment of the community. Twenty (20) of those lots have already been devel-oped into 152 units of much needed, affordable hous-ing for low-income residents, and an additional 150 units are presently under construction.

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PACHS and PRCC have been key catalysts for the community victories described above. With the same vigor and determination to continually address the prominent exigencies of the community, the two orga-nizations have collaborated in designing the proposed initiative.

The summit also resulted in the conceptualization and development of Paseo Boricua (Puerto Rican Prome-nade), a half-mile long commercial corridor at the cen-ter of the community. This commercial strip includes several retail stores and restaurants, which have been engaged in the community planning and development of the area. Demarcated at either end of the corridor by a sixty-foot flag of Puerto Rico, the world’s largest monuments to a flag, the Paseo has become the cul-tural and economic heartbeat of Chicago’s Puerto Ri-can community.

Building on these accomplishments, community resi-dent leaders have formed The Puerto Rican Agenda Group, designed to identify new areas of need in the community, develop solutions and secure resources to address the identified needs. Understanding the role of art and culture in developing a sense of community and to inspire a greater civic engagement among resi-dents, the group’s initial focus was on the develop-ment of an institute of art and culture.

In collaboration with the Chicago Park District and with significant community fundraising, the Institute of Puerto Rican Art and Culture had its grand opening in June 2009. The inaugural exhibition featured the su-perb body of work of the renowned Puerto Rican artist Pablo Marcano García. What was once an aban-doned horse stables in Humboldt Park will now be a magnificent community institution.

One of artist Pablo Marcano García’s pieces displayed at IPRAC during the grand opening. Much of his work has agriculture as a central theme, a strong statement about the role agriculture has played in Puerto Rican culture.

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Lead Organizations PRCC and PACHS share a common organizational history. The community leaders that founded PACHS in 1972 to address the dismal educational status of the community also founded PRCC in 1973 to address the socio-economic issues that plagued the commu-nity and to focus on cultural needs as well. The two organizations have collaborated on a host of commu-nity issues ever since. Collaboration has been the hallmark of the organizations. The most salient ac-complishments of the organizations have been col-laborations between them and among many other partners. That is certainly the case with the initiative at hand.

The Puerto Rican Cultural Center xix The PRCC is a non-profit,

community-based organiza-tion that has been actively engaged in community building since its inception in 1973. It is celebrating its 36th anniversary as a dynamic community institu-tion, working to increase

capacity and community engagement in addressing the most pressing issues in Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood. PRCC has been at the heart of the community’s renaissance, catalyzing all of the accom-plishments described in the previous section and many more. All PRCC programs encourage partici-pants to think critically about their reality and promote an ethics of self-reliance based on social responsibil-ity. The programs address critical health, social, and cultural issues affecting the community including HIV/AIDS, education, homophobia, gang violence, gentrification, and community and economic develop-ment—involving youth in all aspects of program de-velopment and community planning. This level of youth involvement provides many opportunities for youth to connect with their environment in positive

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vi PRCC programs have become community institutions in their own right. They include:

• CO-OP Humboldt Park—community organizing for obesity prevention (described in more detail below);

• Café Teatro Batey Urbano—youth space for crea-tive expression including theater, hip hop, spoken word and online broadcast;

• La Casita de Don Pedro—community folkloric space and art gallery;

• Community as Intellectual Space—annual confer-ence held with UI’s Graduate School of Informa-tion Science and Community Informatics Initiative analyzing critical community issues;

• Pipeline to Health Professions—intensive support for students interested in a career in health;

• Consuelo Corretjer Day Care Center—licensed learning center for 1 to 5 year olds;

• Vida-Sida—HIV/AIDS and sexually transmitted disease prevention;

• La Voz del Paseo Boricua—monthly bilingual newspaper published by the Puerto Rican Cultural Center, focused on critical social issues and causes, providing information on resources and opportunities, all the while celebrating the many triumphs of the community;

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• Participatory Democracy Project—community organizing initiative designed to challenge gentri-fication and prevent the displacement of low-income residents from Chicago’s oldest Puerto Rican community;

• Fiesta Boricua—annual music and food festival featuring prominent and up-and-coming artists in Puerto Rican music performing on multiple stages. Attended by over 200,000 residents, Paseo Boricua becomes a half-mile, standing-room-only, open-air concert hall for a day. It has become a major way of celebrating the commu-nity’s accomplishments. The festival serves to in-form community residents and recruit new mem-bers into the community’s various initiatives.

vii PRCC is currently focused on establishing a Commu-nity of Wellness, in collaboration with other commu-nity allies, to address critical health concerns, a key component of which is the Urban Agriculture Initiative. This focus is informed by studies authored or com-missioned by PRCC, including the two discussed in the previous section.

viii The role of PRCC in the proposed initiative is to continually monitor and assess the community’s health concerns, engage partners and allies, and im-plement the community organizing campaign on ur-ban agriculture through its CO-OP Humboldt Park and Participatory Democracy programs. It has engaged

an architectural firm to develop the plans for a smart, eco-friendly greenhouse. PACHS and PRCC have been granted access by the Institute for Puerto Rican Art and Culture and Chicago Park District to parkland in Humboldt Park for the development of the Urban Oasis Community Farm.

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Pedro Albizu Campos High School PACHS is an alternative, charter school that has been serving the Humboldt Park community since 1972. It was founded to reverse the unconscionably high dropout rate (then, nearly 70 percent) of students attending the community’s public high schools. The school provides its students with a highly supportive, student-centered environment in which to undo years of negativity and failure at their prior schools, and rekindle their innate curiosity and love of learning.

The curriculum is focused on relatedness and rele-vance. The applicability of concepts is embedded in the lessons. Students learn, for instance, that their bodies, their homes and their communities are verita-ble learning laboratories, that there is chemistry and physics in the act of brushing their teeth and that there is history, geometry and poetry in planting a row of tomatoes.

Students learn the value of service learning and community engagement, that the community is an eco-system, and that

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their well-being as individuals is inexorably tied to the well-being of their community and vice versa. Ultimately they come to appreciate that although they have much to learn, as life-long members of this ecosystem they also have much to teach and give to their fellow students, their teachers and their community.

In keeping with this tradition and as part of its en-gagement in establishing a Community of Wellness,

PRCC and PACHS developed a Pipeline to Health Careers program in collaboration with Wright Col-lege and the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) School of Public Health. PACHS infused its science curriculum with botany, agronomy and urban agricul-ture. The students have been engaged in problem-based learning and encouraged to research, delib-erate and come up with solutions to the community’s food desert status and the concomitant health is-sues. The role of the teachers is to observe the de-liberations, suggest potential resources and innocu-ously infuse key concepts in content that are ger-mane to the deliberations. The ideas that the stu-dents have generated include: a community-wide

Urban Agriculture students worked over the summer to address the issue of food security in their community—the above student works to put together a model she designed to demonstrate rooftop gardening in Humboldt Park.

campaign to encourage community residents to grow their own food through back yard and roof-top gardens, the development of a greenhouse at the school and on the rooftops of buildings along Paseo Boricua, and the creation of an urban community farm in Humboldt Park, a 209-acre park located within the community's bounda-ries.

The students' recommendations have fuel a community-wide urban agriculture initiative. PACHS and the PRCC have jointly convened an Urban Agriculture Planning Committee, comprised of parents, teachers, directors of both organizations, and collaborators from the Univer-sity of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), to further elaborate on the students’ recommendations. The Committee meets semi-monthly. What has resulted is an expansive and innovative vision of community build-ing—in essence, how to turn an urban food desert into a nutritious oasis.

Other Key Partners

CO-OP Humboldt Park (Community Organizing for Obesity Prevention)

x CO-OP Humboldt Park is a PRCC program that has deve-loped a network of community groups, medical facilities, and elected officials to create awareness of obesity-related illnesses and create community-based solutions to this epidemic.

xi This network includes the Humboldt Park Diabetes Task Force, which brings together key health care partners such as the Sinai Urban Health Institute, Rush Univer-sity Medical Center, UIC School of Public Health, and the American Diabetes Association. CO-OP Humboldt Park also developed and manages a Farmers’ Market, a Produce-Mobile (free produce brought into the commu-nity by a socially conscious grocer on a biweekly basis),

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contains 13 acres, Humboldt Park ranks as one of the largest in Chicago with 209 acres. CPD is presently encouraging community gardeners to apply for space to create small ornamental and edible gardens on parkland. PACHS and PRCC have encouraged CPD to augment its vision to include the multi-generational urban community farm discussed in this proposal. The community partners have identified the desired one-acre of parkland immediately adjacent to the IPRAC space referenced above and CPD is currently determining the appropriateness of the space for farm-ing. Although at the time of this submission the park-land space for the Urban Farm is not fully secured, full access to the space will be finalized within the next two months.

The Chicago Botanic Garden CBG is one of the country's most visited public gar-dens and a preeminent center for research and learn-ing, with its world-renowned plant collections and dis-plays. CBG will develop and facilitate multi-day train-ing workshop for faculty, staff, parents and other com-munity residents involved in the Urban Agriculture Ini-tiative based on the Garden’s highly successful Green Youth Farms and Windy City Harvest models. In addi-tion, CBG will:

• Train PACHS’s integrated science and urban ag-riculture instructors in setting up and operating a greenhouse for year round food production; and

• Assist staff and students in developing concepts for high-function, accessible and secure food pro-duction garden in Humboldt Park.

a farmer’s basket cooperative, and Muévete (Get Moving), a highly successful exercise and fitness pro-gram. The role of the program within this initiative is to engage the community in embracing a healthier lifestyle by actively participating in the production and consumption of nutritious produce and in increasing its level of physical activity.

The Institute of Puerto Rican Art and Culture

xii IPRAC is a state of the art exhibition space and an active studio for the teaching and production of art. It is located on a 3-acre parcel of parkland within Hum-boldt Park. It was once a stable for horses and sat abandoned for 3 decades. Now it is a magnificent community institution instead of the eyesore that it was. IPRAC has made available a half-acre of its land to PACHS and PRCC for use in the Urban Agriculture Initiative. It is understood that the resulting gardens will be esthetically pleasing so that it fits seamlessly within the nature of the Institute.

xiii The Chicago Botanic Garden has provided its creative expertise in the converting the space into a fertile oa-sis that is artfully composed.

The Chicago Park District xiv CPD is comprised of 570 parks containing a total of

7,600 acres of parkland. Given that the average park

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Top Left: The Institute of Puerto Rican Art and Culture, the grounds of which are the future site of the Urban Oasis Edible Garden and Community Farm;

Top Right: Rendering of IPRAC, including the new parking lot and gardens around the building that will be installed in part-nership with the Chicago Botanic Garden;

Bottom: Aerial view of IPRAC and surrounding land as it is today, demarcating the future location of the edible garden and the community farm. IPRAC had its inaugural opening on June 12, 2009

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UIUC Graduate School of Library and In-formation Science

xv GSLIS's Community Informatics Initiative (CII) works with community organizations and residents to de-velop information and communication technologies to achieve their goals. The core of the program is community inquiry: collaborative action to create knowledge and technology connected to people's values, history, and lived experiences; the develop-ment of models of engagement that are just, democ-ratic, participatory, and open-ended; and the integra-tion of theory and practice in an experimental and critical manner.

xvi The GSLIS CII has over a decade of experience of direct work with communities around the globe. In particular, the CII has a well-established relationship with PACHS, based around onsite teaching, re-search, and engagement in the community. After visiting the PACHS Urban Agriculture Initiative in 2007, UIUC Chancellor, Richard Herman, PhD, committed to fund a five-year graduate assistantship to focus specifically on the agriculture initiative. GSLIS’s faculty and graduate students lend their ex-pertise to the initiative by identifying best practices and research-based approaches to the science and art of urban agriculture, as well as their knowledge of community information flows and technology devel-opment (e.g., website design). They will also assist

by marshalling other university resources to the en-deavor, including technical expertise in agronomy, marketing and program evaluation.

UIUC Office of Extension and Outreach

xvii The UIUC Office of Extension and Outreach offers educational programs to Illinois residents that are aimed at making life better, healthier, safer and more profitable for individuals and their communities.

xviii The UIUC Cook County Extension is committed to providing Junior Master Gardener training to PACHS students who are involved in the school’s urban agri-culture program. The training program will include curriculum materials and the participation of certified Master Gardener volunteers who will work directly with

Humboldt Park Youth working alongside a Master Gardener at the University of Illinois Cook County Extension Office in Chicago.

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Recreating the Built Environment to Foster Community Food Production The vision includes the construction of greenhouses on the rooftops of buildings throughout the community. These will be critical components of an expansive endeavor to have the community grow its own nutritious produce. The proprietors of ten buildings within a city block of PACHS and PRCC have expressed a commitment to making their rooftops available for this purpose, provided a feasibility study is done that ensures the structural integrity of their edifice and that funding for the addition is secured.

Reconceptualizing the use of these rooftops in this manner provides multiple benefits for the proprietors and residents of the buildings, and for the com-munity’s common environment as well. Most of the sun’s energy beaming on the roofs is detrimental to building and the community, as it increases the cost of cooling the building and contributes to urban heat. Our vision is to efficiently harness this rooftop solar energy by converting it to photosynthesis in the greenhouses and photovoltaic energy in solar panels that will be installed alongside the greenhouses. The

solar electricity produced will power the mechanicals of the greenhouses and may even be channeled to provide for all or part of the electrical demand of the building itself; all of this in addition to the production of nutritious produce. We are presently in discussions with YouthBuild, Inc. to engage and train our students in the design and construction of the greenhouses and in the installation of these rooftop solar panels.

Rendering of the prototypical smart, eco-friendly greenhouse to be constructed on the roof of the school’s cafeteria and adjacent to the Science Lab. (Lisec & Biederman, Ltd.)

“There is a quiet revolution stirring in our food system. It is not happening so much on the distant farms that still provide us with the ma-jority of our food; it is happening in cities, neighborhoods, and towns. It has evolved out of the basic need that every person has to know their food, and to have some sense of control over its safety and security. It is a revo-lution that is providing poor people with an im-portant safety net where they can grow some nourishment and income for themselves and their families…. And it is providing an oasis for the human spirit where urban people can gather, preserve something of their culture through native seeds and foods, and teach their children about food and the earth. The revolution is taking place in small gardens, un-der railroad tracks and power lines, on roof-tops, at farmers’ markets, and in the most un-likely of places. It is a movement that has the potential to address a multitude of issues: eco-nomic, environmental, personal health, and cul-tural.”1 Michael Ableman, Fatal Harvest (The Institute for Deep Ecology), quoted in “Urban Agriculture: A Revolutionary Model for Economic Development” by Chris Lazarus, New Village: Building Sustain-able Cultures, Issue 2, 2000, p.64.

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and consuming fresh produce;

C. Engage our partnerships with community churches, schools, clinics, local business, gov-ernment agencies, and public officials (elected and appointed) to disseminate information on health nutrition and cultivation to the community residents they serve;

D. Strategically utilize mass venues and cultural fes-tivities in the community, such as Three Kings Day, Puerto Rican Parade Week, Fiesta Boricua and Haunted Paseo (collectively attended by hundreds of thousands of participants) to dis-seminate materials and engage residents; and

E. Strategically utilize the local mass media by con-vening press conferences, securing that articles are written in the print media and coverage is pro-vided by the broadcast media of the Initiative, and placing ads in the community newspaper, La Voz de Paseo Boricua (also a program of PRCC).

The purpose of the campaign is to educate the com-munity on health and nutrition, but also to encourage its active engagement in the cultivation and consump-tion of fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables, and to en-courage more active and less sedentary lifestyles in an intentional effort to reduce the prevalence of diabe-tes, obesity and hypertension.

Essential Components of the Initiative

The Initiative is comprised three essential compo-nents: community education and engagement, com-munity food production and distribution, and active living. Each component is comprised of several es-sential elements. The components and their elements are described below.

“Sí Se Puede” Community Education and Engagement The campaign is comprised of three elements: Health and Nutrition, the Green Collar Pipeline, and Junior Master Gardeners program.

Health and Nutrition Campaign The effectiveness and success of the Initiative is fully dependent on the knowledge and engagement of the community as a whole. An expansive campaign on Health and Nutrition is being developed in which CO-OP Humboldt Park and the Participatory Democracy Project, two key components of PRCC, will:

A. Develop educational materials, such as bro-chures, fliers and posters to disseminate through-out the community;

B. Deploy their staff and volunteers to carry out a door-to-door campaign that engages community residents in dialogue on health and nutrition and the need to address the food desert by cultivating

Students visit a Green Roof Garden in Humboldt Park and learn about irrigation systems and the Earthbox®, information and resources that they will bring back to their community.

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Junior Master Gardener Program PACHS provides students with a forum for continuous learning and innovation. It has redesigned and inte-grated its science and math curriculum to focus on urban agriculture. The curriculum is infused with con-cepts in botany, agronomy and urban agriculture. For the past 4 years, the students have been engaged in growing culturally relevant herbs, fruits and vegeta-bles, using soil-based and hydroponic (soil-less) tech-nologies. Students germinate plants from seed, nur-ture their growth into seedlings, and transplant the soil-based ones into El Coquí, the school’s community garden.

Students who are interested in more profound skill sets in horticulture will participate in a Master Gar-dener program specifically designed for our students by the Director of Urban Horticulture and Environment of the UIUC – Cook County Extension Office. The Junior Master Gardeners program will allow students to delve deeply into topics in botany, soils, vegeta-bles, fruits, flowers, trees and shrubs, grasses, land-scaping, insects, and plant diseases. These skill sets will be reinforced as students work with the commu-nity farmers in the Urban Oasis and in the green-houses, and will be invaluable for the long-term

sustainability of the Urban Agriculture Initiative in Humboldt Park.

Green Collar Pipeline To further stimulate student engagement in urban ag-riculture and green technology in the long-term, PRCC and PACHS have developed a partnership with Wilbur Wright College (WWC) and UIUC to create a Green Collar Pipeline for the students. The pipeline allows the students the opportunity to expand on the knowl-edge and skill sets mastered in the classroom, green-houses and gardens and engage in post-secondary courses that will lead career paths in the booming in-dustries of the future. WWC is presently developing an associate’s degree program in urban agriculture and green technology. The program will bridge the curricula of PACHS and other community high schools to the academic programs of the College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences at UIUC where students can complete their under-graduate and graduate degrees. The curricula of the three educational institutions will be synergistically articulated to ensure a seamless transition for students from one academic level to the next.

PACHS students grow plants hydroponically using an Ebb and Flow system as part of their integrated science curricu-lum. Plants grown in the classroom are transplanted in com-munity and rooftop gardens.

PACHS students engage with Master Gardener to learn about container gardening.

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“Cosecha Lo Tuyo” Community Food Pro-duction and Distribution This component of the Initiative is focused on the ways in which the community can become self-sufficient in producing its own food reserves. The component is comprised of four elements: the Urban Oasis Edible Garden and Community Farm, rooftop greenhouses, backyard and community gardens, and distribution through El Conuco Community Pro-duce Market and La Cosecha Produce Kiosks.

Urban Oasis Edible Garden and Community Farm In a community where land is at a premium and va-cant lots are prohibitively expensive as a result of the pressures of gentrification, innovation is critical in or-der for the community to provide for its own nutritional needs. The needed innovation has come in heavy doses from the students of PACHS as they have led the way in proposing rooftop greenhouses and gar-dens, and the creation of a community urban farm on parkland. The Initiative is responsive to the students and premised on recreating the built environment by developing state of the art, eco-friendly greenhouses in the “most unlikely of places”, community parkland and rooftops.

The Urban Oasis is an urban community farm in which parkland is transformed into an aesthetically pleasing edible garden. This is an example of the reconceptualization of the built environment, taking a portion of a community green space and making it much greener. The Chicago Park District’s Humboldt Park is 209 acres of beautiful urban parkland within the Humboldt Park community. In this collaboration, the Park District will initially lease a half-acre lot to PACHS and PRCC for the creation of the Urban Oa-sis. Additional parkland will be made available once the success of the Oasis is demonstrated.

The Sí Se Puede Campaign will serve to identify un-employed or underemployed community residents who have agricultural expertise and are committed to working with our students in establishing and main-taining Urban Oasis. The Initiative will seek to secure Americorps funding for these community residents, providing them with living wage stipends, health in-surance and educational stipends. The Americorps volunteers will be principally responsible for the culti-vation, harvesting and upkeep of the Urban Oasis.

The Urban Oasis will be established on a half acre of organically composted raised beds meticulously de-signed and landscaped to be consonant with its sur-roundings, as the space is immediately adjacent to the Institute of Puerto Rican Arts and Culture, a state of the art exhibition space and an active studio for the teaching and production of art and cultural artifacts. The Oasis will be designed by landscape architects in collaboration with the Chicago Botanic Garden (CBG), one of the nation's most visited public gardens and a preeminent center for learning and research, with its world-renowned plant collections and displays. CBG will provide ongoing consultation, training and techni-cal assistance. IPRAC will provide guidance to en-sure that the design is in keeping with Puerto Rican cultural motifs.

The cultivation will be fully organic and multi-crop in nature. The crops to be grown have largely been de-termined by a produce consumption survey that was

Student cares for ají dulce (Puerto Rican sweet pepper) plants in one of the community gardens.

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administered in 2008. The results indicated that 82% of the adult respondents would consume at least the daily minimum requirement of fresh produce if it were affordably available within the community. Sixty four percent of Puerto Rican respondents indicated that their produce consumption would significantly increase with the affordable availability of culturally consonant produce such as batata, malanga, yuca and ñame. These tropical perennial tubers will not likely grow in

Chicago’s temperate climate unless cultivated in a climate-controlled greenhouse. However the stu-dents will be encouraged to experiment in determin-ing the feasibility and practicality of growing these tubers in the Urban Oasis.

According to the Community Food Security Coalition, urban multi-crop cultivation (polyculture) can produce yields that are 13 times more per acre than the yields of mono-crop rural farms, assuming that urban farm-ers utilize raised beds, soil amendments, and season extenders such as row covers, hoop houses and greenhouses.1 The anticipated crop yield is 50,000 pounds of produce in the initial year. It is also antici-pated that the annual yield will significantly increase as the community residents and students become more proficient in food production. The yields will increase yet again once the fruit trees start to flower and bear fruit.

Rooftop Greenhouses This element is another example of a component that is born of student innovation. It is also an example of the recreation of the built environment, constructing eco-friendly, solar-powered greenhouses on the roofs of buildings in t he community.

The initial and prototypical greenhouse has been constructed on the roof of PACHS’s cafeteria, placing it immediately adjacent to the science laboratory, making it an extension of the school’s lab. This greenhouse will be operational by April 2011. It is

Hydroponic lettuce being grown in a greenhouse will grow from seed to harvest in 36 days.

Community residents who grow herbs, fruits and vege-tables in their backyards will be encouraged to sell their excess yield in the community produce market.

Batata Malanga

Yuca Ñame

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the greenhouses are fully operational, the estimated yields will be 6,000 to 10,000 pounds of produce per greenhouse. The cultivation will be monitored closely to ensure maximum quality and efficiency. Faculty from UIUC’s College of Agriculture, Consumer and Environmental Sciences (ACES) will provide consulta-tion, training and technical assistance on greenhouse and hydroponics maintenance and operation.

Backyard and Community Gardens The Sí Se Puede Campaign will encourage community residents to engage in backyard gardening. They will be encouraged to cultivate three to four times more than what their family will consume. The excess is to be shared with neighbors who do not have the means or ability to cultivate their own. Alternatively, the excess can be donated or sold at the Community Produce Market. The backyard gardeners will be supported by volunteer Master Gardeners and Junior Master Gardeners in collaboration with the Cook County Extension Office of UIUC. Support will include training in methods of raised bed and/or container gardening to ensure that the produce is free of soil contaminants.

The Initiative will collaborate with Growing Pride, an association of community gardeners, to grow surplus produce to maximize the community’s crop yield. It is estimated that 15,000 pounds of produce will be generated annually by back yard and

designed as a “smart” greenhouse in which the criti-cal functions and operations, such as heat-ing/cooling, ventilation, irrigation and nutrient supply, will be computer controlled. Students will set the pa-rameters, but the system will be fully automated to ensure optimal crop quality, maintenance and har-vest. This eco-friendly greenhouse will ultimately be solar-powered, irrigated by re-cycled rainwater, and will be free of pesticides, fertilizers and other chemi-cal pollutants.

The Sí Se Puede Campaign will serve to identify un-employed or underemployed community residents, preferably the residents of the buildings where the greenhouses will be constructed, to train along with our students in soil and hydroponic cultivation and in establishing and maintaining the greenhouses. As with the Urban Oasis, the Initiative will seek to secure Americorps funding for these community residents, providing them with living wage stipends, health in-surance and educational stipends. The Americorps volunteers will principally responsible for the cultiva-tion, harvesting and upkeep of greenhouses. Once

Fresh fruits and vegetables are an essential compo-nent of a healthy individual and healthy community.

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community gardeners.

Ongoing community produce needs assessments will be used in determining the types and quantities of produce to be cultivated. The Initiative will consult with key partners discussed below to help determine crop assignment—which crops will grow optimally in hydroponic, greenhouse environments and which will grow best in the raised, composted beds in the Urban Oasis. The Director of Urban Agriculture will coordi-nate and oversee the needs assessments and the cultivation processes to ensure the quality and quan-tity of produce meet the needs of the community.

Marketing and Distribution The means that will be used to propagate the Sí Se Puede Campaign (discussed above) will also be used in marketing the produce harvested through the Initia-tive—educational materials, door-to-door outreach, community partnerships, the local media, etc. The distribution of produce will be through El Conuco, a central community produce market and through La Cosecha, sidewalk vending kiosks situated immedi-ately outside the location of each of the green houses and at other strategic locations throughout the com-munity. El Conuco (the family farm) will be a large weekend market, reminiscent of the open-air markets that are ubiquitous in Latin American countries.

Presently La Cosecha (the harvest) is our biweekly market basket program through which community residents can purchase fifteen pounds of fresh pro-duce for $9.00. Participants pick up their baskets at centrally located CO-OP Humboldt Park. La Cosecha will evolve into the multi-site, strategically located ki-osks that will open all week but closed on the week-end to encourage the community to commune in El Conuco. The vision includes using adult tricycles cre-ated through Ciclo-Urbano to provide a mode by which to transport the crops and materials that are produced through the Initiative to and from the various production and vending sites.

Muévete Active Living Healthy eating is an essential aspect of what the community needs to do in order to eradicate diabetes, obesity and hypertension, to be sure. But just as es-sential is the need to significantly increase the level of exercise and physical activity. This component is comprised of three elements: Muévete Fitness Op-tions, the Ciclo Urbano Bicycling Program, and the Skate Boarding Project.

Muévete Fitness Options CO-OP Humboldt Park has initiated Muévete (Get Moving), a highly successful exercise and fitness pro-gram that provides participants with workout options that include vigorous aerobic exercise, weight training, brisk walking, jogging and bicycling throughout the community. This free program started out as begin-ner level aerobics club for women of all ages to pro-mote physical activity and provide social support. The program has expanded to include men in the work-outs. The sessions take place four times a week in the gym of the Humboldt Park Field House. The workout includes warm up exercises, a dance aerobic workout, abdominal exercises and ends with stretch-ing and deep breathing. Participants may opt to in-crease their workout regimen by engaging in the other program offerings.

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gaged in skateboarding. Students spend hours on end practicing their skills and honing their craft. PRCC and PACHS sought to encourage this type of physical activity in our youth by establishing a skateboarding program in the summer of 2008. Thirty students participated in a project in which they were encouraged to spend the day focused on all aspects of skateboarding. Participants learned new skill from each other, in addition to learning to de-sign and construct their own skateboards and their own skateboarding park. Almost as many young women were involved in this project as young men.

In addition to the Active Living elements described above, the active participation of students and other community residents in land preparation and main-tenance, cultivation and harvest will significantly increase the exercise and physical activities of the participants.

Muévete also conducts free technical assistance for agencies and organizations that want to establish physical activity for community residents. Thus far, the program has assisted West Humboldt Park Development Council and Von Humboldt Elementary School in developing or improving physical activity interventions in the community.

Ciclo Urbano The initiative now includes CicloUrbano, a community bicycling program that engages community residents in designing and building their own bicycles from scratch or taking donated or junked bicycles and recycling them into eco-friendly, economical, energy-efficient and healthful modes of transportation. The community is becoming increasingly bicycle-friendly as more streets are designated as bike paths and bicycle only lanes are installed. One of the Muévete options is group bicycling throughout the community. Community residents who

do not own a bike can barrow one, rent one, buy one, or build their own through Ciclo Urbano. Bicycles and adult tricycles will be the preferred way to transport produce from one component of the Initiative to an-other.

Skateboard Project An increasing number of our youth are becoming en-

Community bicyclists converge on the Ciclo Urbano location in Paseo Boricua

Humboldt Park skateboarders built their own boards and developed heir skating skills

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buildings and fresh produce kiosks on its side-walks, and by making some of parkland and back-yards greener through their transformation into an edible gardens;

8) Decrease the community’s demand for unsustain-able energy (conventional electricity) by construct-ing greenhouses and photo-voltaic solar panels on rooftops of existing buildings;

9) Improve the career options of students and other community residents by increasing their knowl-edge of agriculture and green technology through their engagement in the edible gardens and greenhouses and through their participation in the green collar pipeline;

Goal and Intended Outcomes The goal of the initiative is to eradicate the commu-nity’s designation as a food desert and engender healthier lifestyles for community residents by engag-ing them in the sustainable production and consump-tion of nutritious produce that is grown by and for them within the community, and by increasing the commu-nity’s engagement in physical activity by actively par-ticipating in urban agriculture.

Intended Outcomes The intended outcomes of the Initiative are as follow:

1) Improve the community’s ability and capacity to be self-sufficient in cultivating affordable, fresh herbs, fruits and vegetables;

2) Increase the active participation of students (pre-school through high school) and other community residents (including elders) in a multi-generational production of nutritious produce;

3) Increase the community’s knowledge of the health benefits of fresh produce in the diet and an active lifestyle, as well as the adverse consequences of fast food, processed food and sedentary living;

4) Increase the community’s access to community-grown affordable produce through an expansive marketing and distribution system that incents community residents to purchase the products of this initiative;

5) Increase significantly the consumption of fresh produce by community residents the increasing the availability and affordability of fresh produce;

6) Decrease the distance community residents

need to travel to access fresh produce by to travel to access fresh produce by expanding the size of the Community Produce Market (aka Farmers Market) and the number of its business days and hours and by establishing strategically located produce kiosks throughout the community;

7) Enhance the community’s built environment by constructing greenhouses on rooftops of existing

Carlos DeJesús and student innovators prepare har-vested ají dulce for the making sofrito.

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Continuous Evaluation and Planning A. Process Evaluation - Measure of Activity Effec-

tiveness - The staff of the Initiative will work as a team to collaboratively develop a comprehensive work plan that will specify the activities to be ac-complished for each objective and the time frame by which they are to be accomplished. The Direc-tor of Urban Agriculture will facilitate the process. A baseline measure will be determined for each objective prior to the onset of the proposed pro-gram. The Director will undertake an evaluative analysis of the objectives at the mid-point and at the end of each program year, comparing the status of each objective to the baseline measure. The activities will be augmented or altered as deemed necessary throughout the program year. The Director will report the results of the evalua-tive analyses to the executive director of PRCC and the principal of PACHS, and ultimately to the Board of Directors of each organization. A final report will be submitted to the funders of the Initia-tive at the end of each program year, or in com-pliance with specified timeframes from funder .

B. Outcomes Evaluation - Success will be measured by the degree to which the program has accom-plished each of the outcome objective discussed above, and has taken significant strides toward fulfilling the goal.

C. Independent Evaluation - The Initiative will utilize its university partnerships to identify and contract a program evaluation consultant to independently assess the effectiveness of the initiative.

Self-Sustainability The entire initiative will continue well beyond any given funding period. It has the potential of eventually becoming self-sustaining. As the agricultural systems and assets are established and become operational and sufficient levels of food production are achieved, the initiative will begin to generate income through the sale of produce to community residents and local res-taurants, schools and other institutions. The long-term sustainability of this project will be approached through the production and sales of fresh, nutritious produce that is grown locally by enterprising students and the community’s experienced farmers, as well as the nascent urban farmers who come from a proud agricultural tradition.

Given that the Initiative is not-for-profit and is thereby driven by the missions of the PRCC, PACHS and the key partners, and not driven by profit motive, the com-plete self-sufficiency of the Initiative is improbable. The viability of this initiative, and the well being of our community, will depend on the vision, compassion and generosity of donors, foundations, corporations, uni-versities and public entities, such as those described in the acknowledgements section above.

PACHS and PRCC will continue to seek and secure funding from other potential partners, including the National Science Foundation, the Kellogg Foundation, Kresge Foundation, Humana Health Systems, the Illi-nois General Assembly, the US Department of Agri-culture, YouthBuild, Inc., the Toyota Foundation, the Eli’s Cheesecake Company, the City of Chicago De-partment of Environment, and many others.

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Ableman, M. (2000). Fatal Harvest. Quoted in Urban Agriculture: A Revolutionary Model for Economic Development by Chris Laza-rus, New Village: Building Sustainable Cultures, 2, 64.

Estarziau, M., Morales, M., Rico, A., Margellos-Anast, H., Whitman, S., & Christoffel, K. (2006). The Community Survey in Humboldt Park: Preventing Obesity and Improving Our Health. Chicago, IL: Puerto Rican Cultural Center and Sinai Urban Health In-stitute. Retrieved July 2, 2009 from http://www.ghpcommunityofwellness.org/display.aspx?pointer=6611

Gallagher, Mari. (2006, July). Examining the Impact of Food Deserts on Public Health in Chicago. Chicago, IL: Mari Gallagher Re-search & Consulting Group.

Maties, D., Gmyrek, K., & Rankis, S. (2007, Autumn). Access to Nutritious Foods and Economic Inequity. Geographic Information Systems II 242 Community Based Mapping Humboldt Park/West Town Project. Chicago, IL: DePaul University.

Shahm A. M. & Whitman, S. Sinai. (2005). Health System’s Improving Community Health Survey: Report 2. Chicago, IL: Sinai Health System.

Whitman, S., Williams, C. & Shah, A. M. (2004). Sinai Health System’s Community Health Survey: Report 1. Chicago, Illinois: Sinai Health System.

Works Cited

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