Los Angeles – October 2009 – The Ballington Plaza VS-65 subsidized housing complex, part of Volunteers of America, is smack dab on Wall Street – just not the Wall Street that you’re thinking of. It’s in the middle of Skid Row in Downtown Los Angeles where homelessness is an epidemic. Ballington Plaza provides 275 subsidized housing units for veterans, graduates of substance abuse programs, people with disabilities, former Skid Row residents, and the working poor. With support services for the mentally ill, the elderly and veterans, a beautifully landscaped courtyard, and comfortable community areas, Ballington Plaza is an OASIS IN THE HEART OF SKID ROW. It is also home to Nathaniel Ayers, the amazing musician that Robert Downey Jr and Jamie Foxx’s movie “The Soloist” was based on.
Since we’d helped out the residents of VS-65 with our previous shoe drive, the team at m.a.m.a . e a r t h decided to ask a group of conscientious students from Miss Woods poetry class at Morningside High School in Inglewood to help us install an edible garden there. Our resident “papa” Eugene Cooke, urban farmer, led the charge. The students brought enthusiasm, fun and were ready to get their hands dirty. The “Grow Where You Are!” garden workshops and gatherings are an opportunity for folks, young and old, to learn about Urban and Guerilla Gardening. We used hands-on work in the organic garden to learn tools for growing food in spaces large or small. We used the earth as inspiration for art using VANS sneakers as containers for plants and herbs. Eugene Cooke emphasized that planting is a way to facilitate a sense of empowerment in
improving the places where we live.
Along with planting beds of onion, greens, marigolds and more, we planted succulents in shoes donated from VANS. When designers at VANS are producing their shoes, the corporate office in California gets the right shoe and the manufacturer in China gets the left shoe. That adds up to a lot of right shoes so we did the eco-friendly thing and re-used!
Thank you to the residents of VS-65 Ballington Plaza, our facillitator Eugene Cooke, and all the students in Ms. Woods poetry class. It is youth like you that are “making a change for the better”!
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