Rooting DC 2011 – Speaker & Panelist Bios
10:00-10:30
From Movement to Revolution: Why Growing Your Own Food is Essential to Freedom
Gordon Clark is the founder and Project Director of Montgomery Victory Gardens. A lifelong activist and organizer, Gordon served as the national Executive Director of Peace Action, the nation’s largest grassroots peace and disarmament organization, from 1996 to 2001, followed by three years as the national Field Director for the Congress Watch division of Public Citizen, and then Project Coordinator for the Chesapeake Climate Action Network. He ran for Congress in 2008 to help bring attention to the issue of global warming. Gordon is a frequent public speaker and writer, and serves on the Sustainable Maryland Agriculture Task Force and Montgomery County’s new Sustainable Community Food System Initiative. He grows vegetables enthusiastically (if not always successfully) in two community gardens, and lives in Silver Spring with his wife Emily and their two cats, Domino and Snoop.
Montgomery Victory Gardens is a new non-profit project (founded in 2009) devoted to building an ethos and practice of personal and community food production in Montgomery County, Maryland. MVG puts out a weekly local food update, coordinates a Congregational Community Garden Network, is leading the campaign to get vegetable gardens in our county schools, and works with individual and community gardeners, farmers, and county planners to create a more sustainable, self-reliant and above all local food system. Join us, and join the good food revolution! You can visit Montgomery Victory Gardens on our Facebook page, or on the web at montgomeryvictorygardens.org
10:45-11:45
Making Community Gardens Flourish: Growing Communities, Raising Healthy Kids
This panel will discuss the process of bringing community stakeholders together to start a community or school garden. Issues discussed will include land acquisition, spreading the word, negotiating the political landscape, and the community outreach necessary to sustain and expand your program.
Pertula George is the Executive Director of Common Good City Farm in Washington, DC. Before moving to the area she spent six years managing youth programs at The Food Project in Massachusetts. She holds a Master’s Degree in Sustainable International Development from Brandeis University’s Heller School of Social Policy and Management. She has served as a school teacher and co-founder of a youth and agriculture project in St. Lucia. Working with diverse people has reinforced her commitment to building strong communities and creating social change. Pertula loves growing, cooking and eating food. She subscribes to local and sustainable food systems and embraces spirituality. She is married and in her spare time she enjoys the outdoors and inspirational books and documentaries.
Frances Evangelista is the Community Outreach and Development Director at Walker Jones Education Campus. Under her guidance an urban “farm” seemed to spring up from nowhere at Walker Jones this past August impressing sustainable agriculture enthusiasts with its size. Harvested produce helped feed students, teachers and parents at Walker Jones’ “Back to School Night” and some of the surplus has been donated to the DC Central Kitchen. In short order significant amounts of squash, collard greens, turnip greens and more were provided to nearby community residents throughout the fall. Walker Jones has set the standard on what a school garden in DC can and should look like while beautifying an empty lot not far from Chinatown.
Kenneth Butler is the garden manager of the historic Langston Terrace Dwellings’ Resident Community Gardening & Kids Gardening Project. An expert gardener with over 35-years experience, last summer Mr. Butler directed a staff of six volunteers in growing food, mentoring over 30 children, teaching healthier eating habits, and improving the community’s spirit. Langston was only the second public housing project built in the country; the first in Washington, DC. Mr. Butler has created the first edible garden in a DC Housing Authority complex (DCHA). He’s working to bring gardens to other low-income and DCHA communities in wards 5-8, and will be holding a weekly forum on starting community gardens every Wednesday in March at 10:30 AM at the Benning Road Library.
Carl Rollins is on staff at the Common Good City Farm. A health, gardening, and environmental activist; Mr. Rollins plays an active role in seeking policy changes that will help scale-up urban agriculture in the nation’s capital. An environmental educator, a former practicing attorney, and a master gardener, Mr. Rollins is also a member of the Advisory Board of the D.C. Farm to School Network and a former Co-President of the DC Environmental Education Consortium.
Gardening in Small Spaces
Dennis Chestnut was born in Washington, D.C., and is a lifetime resident of Ward 7. He has been married for 39 years and is the proud father of four daughters, two sons, and eleven grandchildren. Growing up in the far-northeast section of Washington, DC, Dennis became connected to the many green spaces, parks, streams, and the Anacostia River. Dennis is founding executive director of Groundwork Anacostia River DC, chairman of the Hillbrook Community Association, Friends of Watts Branch (a sub-watershed organization), and the Development Committee of the Lincoln Heights/Richardson Dwellings New Communities program. Dennis is a board member of Casey Trees Foundation, executive committee member of the Sierra Club DC Chapter, vice-chair for the District of Columbia of the Anacostia Watershed Citizen Advisory Committee and other non-profit boards including the Ward 7 Non-Profit Network. Dennis is also co-owner of the Center for Green Urbanism, LLC.
Four Season Harvests and Seedling Production
Learn how you can harvest vegetables in the coldest months of the year, and use those same techniques to start your own seedlings in the spring time. You will leave the workshop with an understanding of how to build cold frames, low tunnels, and hoop houses, which crops can grow throughout the winter, the best soils for starting seeds and how to mix them, and how to start seeds in trays.
Vinnie Bevivino is a leader in promoting and proliferating urban agriculture in the Washington, DC beltway. He has built and managed school and community gardens within Maryland, co-wrote Growing Healthy Habits, an elementary gardening curriculum, and co-founded ECO City Farms, and non-profit urban farming organization in Prince George’s County. He most recently started Seed and Cycle, an urban farming and compost design consulting company in an effort to further spread and progress urban farming in the region. More information at seedandcycle.com
Christian Melendez farms for ECO City Farms in Prince George’s County, MD. We are sowing urban agriculture to grow food, fertility, and farmers through various partners and initiatives in the Chesapeake region. We welcome all to engage our educational non-profit farm network to pioneer space-intensive food production methods. ECO City Farms is also turning local waste-streams into food-streams with a variety of composting methods, and empowers adults and youth through hands-on programming offered year-round. More information at ecocityfarms.org
Kristin Carbone owns and operates Radix Farm, a two acre produce CSA located in Prince George’s County with weekly CSA drops in DC. Kristin has been growing food in various capacities for over ten years, from urban to rural, always organically and always searching for ways to make farming more sustainable. More information at radixfarm.wordpress.com
Puttin’ It Up: Canning for Beginners
Maureen Moodie loves all things food. After growing up surrounded by the cornfields of Ohio and trudging through the coastal mountain farms of Brazil, she moved to Berkeley, CA to pursue a graduate degree in cultural anthropology researching alternative food movements in the US. A teaching job at George Washington University brought her to DC where she put her PhD research on hold and started working as the Farm Manager for the Neighborhood Farm Initiative and at Radix Farm in Maryland. She is now the Farm Director at the new Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food and Agriculture (www.arcadiafood.org) and an avid food preservationist!
Ibti Vincent spent 14 months (April 2009-July 2010) traveling the country on a bicycle to work alongside organic farmers, collaborate with school and community gardeners, scour farmers’ markets, and meet with food educators, chefs, and policy makers. (And, of course, cooking any time anyone let her into their kitchen.) She continues to write for magazines and blogs, including her own: abikeablefeast.blogspot.com. Need a recipe or a restaurant recommendation? Call her. Or you will find her this spring aboard Arcadia’s mobile market — a school bus filled with local produce and other goodies traveling around DC neighborhoods as part of her work with the Arcadia Center for Sustainable Food & Agriculture.
Guerrilla Gardening for Kids
Make take-home seed balls to spread flowers anywhere and everywhere! Please note: this is a family-friendly workshop intended for participants who have come with their children.
Kaifa Anderson-Hall is the Program Director at the Washington Youth Garden. She comes to the position having been a program participant herself where her passion for and understanding of the importance of gardening was cultivated. She is a founder of a DC public charter school, a UDC Master Gardener and currently enrolled in the Horticultural and Landscape Certificate Program at the USDA Graduate School.
Chris Turse is the Garden Coordinator at the Washington Youth Garden. Chris studied Plant Science, Science and Agricultural Education, and Horticultural Therapy at Rutgers University. He has been utilizing his passion and knowledge of organic agriculture through educating and demonstrating best practices at the WYG’s ¾ acre demonstration garden at the U.S. National Arboretum.
Kacie Warner is the Education Coordinator at the Washington Youth Garden. Kacie has worked in the policy, education, and production sides of sustainable food and agriculture. She’s a UDC Master Gardener and an associate with Metro Ag: Alliance for Urban Agriculture.
Zachary Levine is the Education Assistant at the Washington Youth Garden. Zach has a background in environmental education and is excited to be joining the WYG as their newest staff member.
Wild About Worms!
How to make a home worm bin and care for earth’s hardest workers. Please note: this is a family-friendly workshop intended for participants who have come with their children.
Rebecca Lemos is the co-founder and Executive Director of City Blossoms. Rebecca’s been working with kids in DC for over ten years and uses her MFA to integrate art and gardening.
Lola Bloom is the co-founder and Director of Curriculum of City Blossoms. Lola has been teaching art and gardening in DC and abroad for over ten years, and continues to teach art full time in a local elementary school.
12:00-1:00
Sharing the Harvest
See how whatever scale you are working on, you can participate in a regional process working to ensure that everyone has access to fresh, healthy, affordable food through equitable distribution networks!
Emily Townsend began working with the Institute for Local Self Reliance in November 2009, researching food recovery. She is currently coordinating the launch of Fork It Over DC, a project to support and promote the donation of excess food by restaurants and grocery stores. The project will include outreach and education, including ForkItOverDC.org, a website that will help match potential food donors with organizations that can use and distribute the food. Emily has a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Oregon State University, and in her other life studies the quantum mechanics of nanoparticles at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. She also cofounded Maitri House, an intentional community in Takoma Park, Maryland.
Susan Topping is the Program Manager in the Capital Area Food Bank‘s Harvest for Health Department. She manages numerous education, distribution and community based programs that enable low-income people to have access to fresh locally grown produce. She came to the Food Bank six years ago to coordinate the Anacostia Farmer’s Market and Food Stamp Initiative Programs.
Derrick Smith, Dcysive Community Services and My Community Union
My Community Union (MCU) is a project created to improve health outcomes by implementing healthier lifestyles. Healthier lifestyles include nutritional training, healthier cooking demonstrations and health education regarding nutrition and health. The MCU is using gardening and gleaned vegetables to increase the amount of fresh produce consumed in all communities. It is our desire to ensure that not only are the produce available but the residents are aware of how to cook the often unfamiliar produce. MCU has provided fresh produce to 6 senior citizen housing communities, 3 underserved and disadvantaged communities in Ward 7 and one public housing community in Ward 8. MCU partners with a large non-profit gleaning network, a non-profit community specific social referral organization, and a produce distributor.
Mike Curtin is the Chief Executive Officer of DC Central Kitchen & The Campus Kitchens Project. Mike comes to DCCK after a 20-year career in the hospitality business, most of which has been spent in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia. After working at the historic Hay-Adams Hotel across from the White House and several other restaurants in the DC area, he opened his own restaurant, The Broad Street Grill, in Falls Church, VA – a period that he now refers to as his first experience in the nonprofit sector. Quickly finding a home at DC Central Kitchen in 2004, Mike has focused on growing the many programs of the Kitchen including the Culinary Job Training Program. Drawing on his experiences as an entrepreneur in the restaurant business, Mike has spent significant time expanding the Kitchen’s social enterprise initiatives. Over the last four years, DC Central Kitchen has, through fee-for-service contract, catering and other social enterprise ventures generated over $12 million dollars — nearly half of what it cost to run all the Kitchen’s programs — and employees over 100 people, close to half of whom are graduates of their training program. Mike lives in Falls Church with his wife, Maureen, and their three children, Maeve, Michael III, and Ciara.
Saving Your Vegetable Seeds
This workshop will cover a bit of the hows and whys of seed saving. We’ll briefly cover the difference between hybrid and open pollinated seeds, the value of heirloom varieties, and the important of seed saving and then talk specifically about preventing cross pollination and how to harvest, clean, and store seed from a few popular garden vegetables.
Paul Blundell has been a worker-owner at Southern Exposure Seed Exchange for nearly 6 years. SESE is a worker owned coop mail order seed company in Central Virginia which specializes in heirloom, open-pollinated, and organic vegetable seeds especially suited to the mid-Atlantic and the Southeast. He has done a little bit of everything and a lot of a few things while there. His current project is heading up the design and construction of a new eco-groovy headquarters for the business.
Beekeeping 101
An overview of urban beekeeping will be presented to include honey bee roles, getting started, wood-ware equipment, seasonal management, honey extraction and personal experiences with Q&A’s.
Joe Bozik has been beekeeping since 2006 at the Franciscan Monastery in NE Washington, where there are a dozen beehives tended by 5 beekeepers. Joe, a native of upstate New York, retired in 2007 as a project engineer from the Department of Energy. An avid gardener, Joe volunteers his time at several gardens in Washington, including with the Franciscan Monastery Garden Guild where he currently is treasurer and a past president of the guild.
Green Roofs for Agriculture
Michael Lucy has over 20 years experience offering environmental design, development, construction and management services to a variety of clients. He holds a Masters Degree in Urban and Environmental Planning & Design from the University of Virginia’s School of Architecture. Recent accomplishments include: Assisting with the administration of DC’s Green Roof –Large Retrofit Rebate Program; design and project management services for new landscaping, play equipment and raingardens at Brent Elementary School on Capitol Hill; coordinating the renovation designs for the Arlington Independent Media Center TV station, Buddhist Training Center. He also coordinated a panel of twenty national experts on urban greening and coordinated conceptual design work to improving the Watts Branch watershed in Washington, DC; administered the four largest municipal parks and environmental initiatives for the District Department of Parks and Recreation (DPR) and overseeing the creation of green building guidelines for all new Parks and Recreation buildings.
Roots and Greens cooking demo
Turnip greens with garlic and ginger and Braised hard vegetables
Juliette G. Tahar founded Healthy Living in 1992 as a for-profit business, providing vegetarian and macrobiotic meals, catering, and teaching services. Born of French parents and raised in West Africa, Juliette has studied cooking at many venues in several countries over many years. An appreciation of healthy, delicious foods and a desire to teach simple, everyday cooking is part of her makeup. During the early days of her catering and teaching business, she began volunteering by teaching cooking classes at shelters for homeless women in Washington, DC. These experiences taught her the profound impact that something as simple as a basic cooking demonstration and a shared meal can have on the lives of the undernourished and downtrodden. Seeing them open up, and begin to connect what they eat to their lives, and to see their self-esteem and sense of empowerment increase, was enough to convince her to reinvent Healthy Living as a non-profit organization to help individuals incorporate healthy cooking into their challenging lifestyles and limited budgets. In 2007, Healthy Living was officially incorporated as a 501(c) (3) organization
Since that time, Healthy Living has been dedicated to bringing the message of healthy, simple, affordable meals to DC residents of all backgrounds. Public events include regular vegan cooking classes at Jelleff Community Center, and Outreach Healthy Cooking Programs include multiple homeless shelters, children’s centers, health centers, community centers, and schools.
Reuse and Recycle!
How to make reusable shopping bags from recycled goods and how to make newspaper flower pots. Please note: this is a family-friendly workshop intended for participants who have come with their children.
Erin Gordon is the Elementary School Program Director for Kid Power, Inc. She is a certified Master Gardener and has been working for the past 5 years teaching health, nutrition, and gardening in underserved communities in DC and NYC.
A Seasonal & Healthy Snack
Please note: this is a family-friendly workshop intended for participants who have come with their children.
Sophie Frederickson is a Holistic Food Educator with a lifelong passion for promoting and teaching healthy cooking and artisan bread making. She graduated from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition and the National Gourmet Institute. Sophie teaches cooking classes with the Smithsonian Associates Summer Camp and has been a longtime volunteer at the Washington Youth Garden.
2:15-3:15
The DC Healthy Schools Act
What’s in it for expanding access to meals, farm to school, and school gardens?
Alex Ashbrook serves as the director of D.C. Hunger Solutions, an anti-hunger, anti-poverty non-profit in the District and an initiative of the Food Research and Action Center (FRAC). She works to end hunger and improve the nutrition, health, economic security, and well-being of low-income families in the nation’s capital. She leads and participates in many city-wide coalitions and most recently, was appointed as chair of the D.C.’s Mayor’s Commission on Food and Nutrition in September 2009.
Alex, who joined FRAC in January 2007 as the Director of D.C. Hunger Solutions, brings extensive advocacy experience to her role, much of which has focused on the needs of vulnerable youth. While at Georgetown Law School’s D.C. Street Law Project, Alex supervised law students teaching at D.C. public high schools. She then spent ten years working at Street Law, the national nonprofit dedicated to transforming democratic ideals into citizen action. Alex received her J.D. and L.L.M. from the Georgetown University Law Center.
Sarah Bernardi is a Founding Board Member and Program Director for School Garden Initiatives at DC Greens, a non-profit which focuses on seed-to-table education and supports farm to school initiatives with proceeds from the Glover Park-Burleith Farmers’ Market. Sarah is a Nationally Board Certified teacher with 10 years of public elementary school teaching experience. At Bancroft Elementary, she co-coordinated the garden program, introduced a farm to school program, and participated in their partnership with the White House Garden. Sarah does programmatic consulting D.C. Farm to School Network, helped to craft and advocate for the Healthy Schools Act, and developed a school garden program pilot for DCPS. Sarah also has a BFA in Photography from the San Francisco Art Institute and offers her services pro-bono to other like-minded non-profits.
Urban Composting Made Easy
by Jeremy Brosowsky, Compost Cab, and Kaitlin Rienzo-Stack, DC Urban Compost Corps
Kaitlin Rienzo-Stack is a biologist for a federal agency and a Master Composter by avocation. She founded the DC Urban Compost Corps, an education and outreach group in Washington DC dedicated to teaching and “training the trainers” about compost and organic waste from a uniquely urban and local perspective. In its second year, folks interested in taking the 2011 course and becoming Urban Compost Corps members or looking for more info should email urban.compost.corps@gmail.com.
Jeremy Brosowsky is an entrepreneur and the founder of Agricity, a Washington DC-based company committed to building healthier, more sustainable cities. Agricity’s first project is Compost Cab, a service that makes it easy for people and organizations to compost in the city. Compost Cab offers a clean, convenient, and cost-effective pick-up service for food scraps, coffee grounds, and organic material, and then delivers these compostables to nearby not-for-profit urban farms, where they’re transformed into the fertile soil needed to grow good, nutritious food for the local community. Brosowsky studied composting with Will Allen, and graduated from his Growing Power Commercial Urban Agriculture Program. Agricity is Jeremy’s third startup. He earned degrees in history at the University of Pennsylvania and the London School of Economics, and lives in Mt. Pleasant, DC, with his wife and four kids.
Creating Community Food Distribution Systems, by the Community
Tanikka Cunningham is the Co- Founder and Executive Director of Healthy Solutions. Mrs. Cunningham formed the first and only African American woman owned produce Distribution Company and has worked in produce wholesale and retail distribution for over 10 years; her experience includes developing markets and co-operative buying opportunities in urban and rural areas to increase access to healthy and affordable foods for all community members.
Since 2004, national Healthy Solutions has worked to insure equitable communities that help eliminate the health and social disparities faced daily in African American rural and urban communities; while creating environmental change to better the community as a whole. Healthy Solutions has a network of over 597 limited resource and socially disadvantaged farmers that is source from and work with, as well as another 15 international farmers for items that cannot be grown in the United States. All the food that is offered to our community members is sourced directly from farms and delivered to our communities. Tanikka believes that food alone will not change our communities, so she works to insure that community members have access to food and information through cooking, and nutrition classes to have a broader impact on the communities Healthy Solutions services.
Food for the Kids’ Brain
With the new changes in the local school meal program, lunches are increasingly improving in some schools. Daring to say, school lunches are more packed with nutrition than the box lunch from home. So how can parents compete? This workshop will empower parents with nutrition tidbits to nibble on along with a cooking demo on how to make box lunches worthy of competition to the school lunch. This workshop is open to all interested in child nutrition.
Serving on the frontline of the childhood obesity battle, Tambra Raye teaches nutrition to preschoolers in DC Public Schools based out of the UDC Center for Nutrition, Diet and Health. Prior to UDC she worked with local nonprofits developing school gardening, nutrition educational curriculum as well taught nutrition. She is a graduate of Tufts University’s health communication master’s program and Oklahoma State University where she received her B.S. in human nutrition/premedical sciences with a Spanish minor. She enjoys being creative in the kitchen and helping people to find their inner creative cook too. She is a proud mother of baby Ruby and Elliott who continue to inspire her to leave the planet in a better place for the future with one healthy meal at a time.
Youth Gardening: tips of the trade
A workshop sharing experiences and tips for gardening with different age groups
Lola Bloom and Rebecca Lemos, City Blossoms – see above for bios
Chris Turse and Kacie Warner, Washington Youth Garden – see above for bios
Nutrición General y Comida Saludable
Vamos a conversar de:
¿Qué es salud para nosotros?
¿Qué es comida para nosotros?
¿Cuál es la importancia de nutrición en nuestras vidas?
¿Cuales son las programas de alimentación y nutrición en DC?
¿Como podemos involucrarnos en conversaciones de alimentación y comida saludable aquí en el distrito?
Nicholas Welch es un hombre de 35 años que nació en Ecuador. Tiene diez años de experiencia en las cocinas profesionales en Nuevo México, California, y DC. Fue un coordinador de un programa de alimentos y jardinería enfocado en jóvenes y la población vulnerable en África del Sur por 2 años. Es un voluntario con Common Good City Farm en el área de LeDroit donde trabaja con jóvenes y jardinería. Estudió bioquímica y después salud publico y espera seguir sus esfuerzos en alimentación, nutrición, y jardinería.
3:30-4:30
Working Our Roots: Heritage Gardening to Heal Communities
Michael Twitty is a recognized food historian, community scholar and living history professional of African American food and folk culture. He is webmaster of www.afrofoodways.com, the first website devoted to the preservation of historic African American foods and foodways. He is currently writing a new blog, Afroculinaria (afroculinaria.wordpress.com) further demonstrating his passion for food and its relationship to cultures of African descent around the world. He has conducted classes and workshops, written curricula and educational programs, giving lectures and performed cooking demonstrations for over 100 groups including the Smithsonian Institution, Colonial Williamsburg, Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello, Library of Congress, and the Oxford University Symposium on Food and Cookery. He is well known for his expertise in the history and heritage of enslaved African Americans and their foodways and his expertise in growing African American heirloom crops, open hearth cooking, heritage breed meats, and wild flora and fauna utilized by enslaved Africans and their descendants.
Community Brainstorm: Building a healthy and hunger-free DC
What would it look like if all DC residents had access to healthy, affordable, and culturally appropriate food? What changes would we need to make in our communities? How can we work together to make a positive change? Join us for a brainstorming session – one in a series – about how to build and sustain a grassroots, city-wide movement toward a just, healthy and nourished D.C.
This session is hosted and facilitated by Carl Rollins, members of the Healthy Affordable Food for All Coalition, Ecolocity, Groundwork Anacostia, Healthy Solutions, and others.
Growing Shiitake Mushrooms in the City
Nazirahk Amen, member of Nahziryah Monastic Community, naturopathic physician, acupuncturist, and agriculturist. Dr Amen and his small community are on an ever evolving quest to grow as much of their food as possible. Shiitake log cultivation has become an integral part of that journey.
Know Your Weeds: Identifying Common Edible (and Inedible) Weeds of the Northeast
Foster Gettys is an undergraduate student majoring in Environmental Science and Agriculture at the University of Maryland College Park. Foster learned to grow food on rooftop container gardens in Baltimore and Seoul before coming to Maryland to study soil, plant, and hydrological sciences. While he’s not busy getting excited over plants and dirt in his classes, Foster interns with the Neighborhood Farm Initiative as the 2010 DC Community Garden Census Intern.
The Neighborhood Farm Initiative (NFI) is a non-profit project founded in 2008, focusing on organic vegetable gardening education. NFI’s mission is to cultivate a resourceful community of adults and teenagers working together to engage in small-scale food production in the Washington, D.C. area. NFI spends the growing season teaching new gardeners (adults and teens) how to cultivate and harvest their own organic produce in partnership with three community gardens in DC. At one site, NFI runs a half-acre transit-accessible demonstration garden for community-wide education regarding small-scale vegetable production in an urban setting. See www.neighborhoodfarminitiative.org for more info
Case Studies of School Gardens in DC
Sharing successes and how they are measured, as well as challenges and strategies for dealing with setbacks in the context of gardening at a number of DC’s schools
Sean Miller is the Education Director at Earth Day Network, where he manages the programs and policies of the organization. EDN’s environmental education and green schools campaign supports many a DC school move towards sustainability.
Barbara Percival is a former parent and current volunteer garden coordinator at Watkins Elementary. The garden at Watkins has been a part of the school community for over seventeen years.
Rebecca Helgerson is an early childhood special education teacher at Harriet Tubman Elementary. Just last year, Rebecca and fellow teacher Elisabeth Golub installed a raised bed garden right near the front entryway of their school.
Lola Bloom and Rebecca Lemos, City Blossoms – see above for bios
Kaifa Anderson-Hall, Washington Youth Garden – see above for bio
Comunidad en movimiento: la organizacion y las alternativas alimenticias para la comunidad latina de DC
Xavier Bure es peruano, con experiencia en desarrollo de comunidades sostenibles y agricultura organica sostenible mediante la comunicacion, trabajo en Perú con proyectos agricolas y de reforestacion para el mantenimiento de areas naturales protegidasasi como fomentar la siembra de biohuertos a fin de ayudar a mitigar los problemas nutricionales de comunidades campesinas, en washington trabajo en Clagget farm una finca orgánica perteneciente a cheseapeake bay fundation y con soporte de la misma comunidad (csa) por sus siglas en ingles.
Healing starts from the Root: Deeply Rooted Yoga 101
A holistic health presentation on staying healthy during the winter months. This presentation will include holistic health remedies to staying healthy through the winter. We will do some meditation and yoga; be prepared to align your chakras!
Misia “Mimi” Denéa straddles her time between Philly, NY and DC. She is a Yoga Therapist, Holistic Health Counselor (Certified through New York’s Institute of Integrative Nutrition and the American Association of Drugless Practitioners) and Dancer/Choreographer. Her class focuses on using breath and flow-style yoga to develop strength/agility, quiet the mind and calm the nervous system. She has led yoga and meditation classes throughout the US and abroad at wellness centers, conferences, universities, and corporate offices. She has taught students of many demographics including HIV+ adults, at-risk youth, non-profits, and in her own home. For more information about Mimi visit WWW.MISIAS-HATHA-HOLISTICS-NOW.COM and www.thelighthousedc.com
