Hello everyone! I've been organizing a men's gardening & food sustainability team that meets once a week to bring together beginner and experienced gardeners, to share wisdom, create gardens, and create community. We've had great success, and now I am trying to get the word out about a proposal I've written to find funding so I can make this my full-time job. Please read my proposal below, and if you have any ideas as to anyone who might be interested in providing funding, or if you have any ideas/suggestions, please let me know!!!! Thank you!! ----------- To whom it may concern: I have been the coordinator and facilitator of the Manifest Men’s Gardening & Food Sustainability Team since mid-January of 2009. Manifest, a non-profit men’s wellness community, helps Portland-area men pursue their wellness visions and passions together in more than 40 groups and classes monthly. Since February, the gardening team has brought together beginner and more experienced gardeners every Saturday to create community by starting and maintaining backyard gardens. Sessions range from 5 to 12 participants, and the exchange of information has been very inspiring: several members have started new gardens, participants swap seeds and growing techniques, and a supportive community has grown around what has proved to be an incredibly empowering activity. In the past 8 weeks, the Manifest Gardening & Food Sustainability Team has started five new gardens, brought together 33 different men from all over Portland, and provided resources like seeds, soil amendments, and knowledgeable gardeners for team members. The group visits a new garden every weekend to help start garden beds, amend existing plots, give advice and ideas on succession planting, and identify edible weeds. We have also toured a farm and are learning about topics like container gardening, chickens, pruning, composting, permaculture principles, and crop rotation. Perhaps most importantly, this group provides the space for men (who may otherwise be too intimidated or overwhelmed by the prospect of growing their own food) to come together and support one another in learning about gardening. Based on the success of the Manifest Gardening and Food Sustainability Team, I am requesting $5,100 to fund the creation of a Neighborhood Gardening Group Coordinator pilot position ($4,800 will go towards the salary of the position, with an extra $300 set aside for any supplies that cannot be donated). The group coordinator's primary responsibility will be to organize and coordinate gardening groups in three different Portland neighborhoods over a 4-month period. These gardening groups will be open to all members of the neighborhood, as opposed to the gender-limitations inherent in the Manifest gardening group. At the end of this period, we can examine the success of these groups to determine whether or not continuing them would be valuable to the communities we work with. More specifically, the Coordinator will raise neighborhood awareness of the local group, provide the basic structure for each session, bring in supply donations (tools, amendments, seeds and starts), bring in different “experts” each week to educate the group about a particular aspect of organic gardening, and provide for networking and out-of-group contact between group members. My experiences with the Manifest Gardening Team have convinced me that residents in every Portland neighborhood should have the opportunity to be a part of such a community. By supporting the creation of the Neighborhood Gardening Group Coordinator position, [your organization] will be supporting community-based education that encourages and makes it feasible to eat local, empowers those involved to grow their own food, creates and nurtures connections between neighbors, and reminds us that we all have something to share with those around us. Thank you so much for your consideration! Sincerely, Bryan Rollins (360)-820-8682 rollinb2@gmail.com