Food Justice

Semillas de Justicia Community Garden:

Semillas de Justicia garden is located on 2727 S. Troy; this community safe space officially broke ground in 2014. When it was brought to the attention of Little Village community on that same block, of a strong oil smell emanating from the site. It was then discovered that the fence-less site was being used for leftover old oil barrels. LVEJO organized with Troy street neighbors to demand that this site be cleaned up and transformed into our current  community garden. As a result of this struggle, and with gardening being a strong activity in the community now we have over 30 families with their own garden space. A few cultural programs at Semillas de Justicia include: Weekly Community Potlucks(May-October), Annual Earth Day Garden Clean-up (April 20-22), Annual Mother’s Day Celebration (May 9-10), Annual Harvest Fest (Sep 24-25), and and Annual Dia de los Muertos Community Altar Building (Nov 1-2).

 

Mutual-Aid:

Farm Food Familias: Farm. Food. Familias Mutual-Aid Meals(FFF) is a project co-led the Little Village Environmental Justice Organization and Getting Grown Collective, and community chefs Urban Pilon, Fresher Together, Amor y Sofrito and Kwamena to prepare and deliver meals to families in Little Village, Englewood and South Chicago. FFF started with 50 meals on May 6th, 2020. A portion of produce for each meal is donated by urban agriculture-based nonprofits and businesses located in Chicago’s Southeast and Southwest sides Urban Canopy, Windy City Harvest. To shed light on local farm businesses led by Black and Brown communities, another portion of produce was purchased from Cedillo’s Fresh Produce, Catatumbo Cooperative Farm and Fresher Together. Little Village, Englewood and South Chicago have been and continue to be some of the most affected communities by COVID-19. As of May 1st, 2020, Little Village, Englewood and South Chicago(including South Shore) reported 1285, 712 and 1590 confirmed cases respectively which ignited the urgent creation of FFF.  These communities have a high number of folks working as essential workers. As they face lack of access to food, increasingly due to loss of work, existing systematic disenfranchisement, access to healthcare, and an overload of local food pantries, GGC and LVEJO thought it’d be important to provide community members with weekly nutritional and cultural significant meals as an offering of nourishment and mutual care. 

FFF currently serves 350 meals weekly.