City Heights Farmer's Market

In San Diego, there is a vibrant community called City Heights that is home to refugees from countries all over the world. The Karen of Burma, Sudanese, Vietnamese, and Ethiopians, just to name a few. It is a wonderful place, and walking through the streets is like taking a whirlwind tour of the globe. Unfortunately, there is a lot of poverty in this area, and a lot of need as people are relocated from refugee and IDP camps in war-torn countries and placed in sunny suburban San Diego.

As a community, we've been interested in getting to know the people who live there in the hopes that we can show hospitality toward these new neighbors and offer support to them should the need arise. For me, this stems from the instances of hospitality I've experienced around the world and a desire to reciprocate those, as well as clear command from God throughout the Bible to show hospitality and given aid to "aliens." In these ventures into the neighborhood, I've personally become enamored with the AjA Project (for which I now volunteer), Red Sea Ethiopian restaurant, and the City Heights farmer's market.

I've recently met a guy named Colin who helps organize the weekly farmer's market, we both go to Hawthorn House on Sunday nights. I was excited to find out that he's very connected to the non-profit world in City Heights. I've been able to learn a lot more about this particular market, and wanted to share a bit of its story.

The market is brand new and still growing, but it has been designed so that those who are on food stamps and other government assistance programs can use those benefits to purchase fresh produce from the market. In addition, they've established something called the "fresh fund," which gives an additional $5 worth of free produce to each family. There are a number of great community organizations who've set up booths there in the past, as well as demonstrations about healthy eating and other unique programs. This is a market with a great vision and a great story.

I've felt very excited about supporting this project, and am going to be extending my support from weekly patronage to assisting with some marketing and fundraising to help finance the fresh fund. I met with Colin last week, and will be attending a couple of other meetings in the future with the board that helps organize the market. I'm not sure what that will look like just yet, but one idea that we both seem to like is a recipe book.

This book will include stories about the lives of the market patrons, recipes from their home countries, and lots of pictures. This would be a personal project, but a large percentage of the profits would be donated to the market.

I'll continue to post about what that process might look like, while leaving you with the following colorful goodness:

Update on the Chocolate Project: Bake it Forward

Though I've been far less dutiful in posting updates that I'd hoped, I did think it was important to share this website that we put together to start sharing the story about the human slavery that pervades the chocolate industry.

We challenge you to educate yourself, and then put together a few plates of cookies for your friends and neighbors, attach the card from the website, and challenge them to "bake it forward."

Project- Chocolate

In the spring, a few of us were introduced to the following film trailer:



This sparked a lot of interest in researching more about the chocolate industry, and the slavery that it perpetuates throughout the world. What we found was truly shocking to us:

"Today about 70% of the world's chocolate comes from West Africa, while the remaining bit is harvested in Central/South America and Asia. About 40% of the world's cocoa comes from the small West African country Ivory Coast where in 2002 it was discovered that 284,000 children were trapped in bonded labor on cocoa farms. 15,000 of those children have been trafficked from surrounding countries, the majority of which are Mali, Benin, Togo and Burkina Faso. Ghana, Nigeria and Cameroon, West Africa's other cocoa producers are also known to receive and provide trafficked children. In 2001 a senator from Iowa, Tom Harkins and a House Representative from New York, Eliot Engel attempted to create a bill requiring chocolate manufacturers to put a label on their products showing the chocolate products that were not made by slaves. The chocolate industry protested this act saying that it would cause consumers to boycott, hurting the cocoa farmers even more by bringing in less money, and causing them to use more slaves. The chocolate industry began publicizing action they would take to eliminate child slavery in order to stop the government from taking action. The Chocolate Manufacturers Association adopted the Harkins-Engel Protocol aimed at establishing mechanisms to end “the worst forms of child labor.” Harkins and Engel set a 2005 deadline for the chocolate companies to eliminate child slavery, however it was extended to 2008 when it was not reached. The 2008 deadline has passed with little change made.

According to the World Cocoa Foundation 50 million people worldwide depend on cocoa as a source of livelihood. It is a 13 billion dollar per year industry in the United States bringing in over 400 thousand tons of cocoa beans. By the time these cocoa beans reach the big chocolate manufacturers it is impossible to know which beans were harvested by slaves, and which were not."

It's a little overwhelming to think about that much money and that many slaves, and maybe hard to understand how we can even make an impact. But the key to starting to make changes is sometimes simply to start. We've challenged ourselves to be conscious of the chocolate we buy, and taking a few seconds to check whether or not it's fair trade- fair trade brands will state this on the label. And for many of us, this has extended into the other things we buy as well, like clothing and food. Again, it's a bit overwhelming to know where to start, but we're working on a few projects to start spreading the word and changing the way we buy.

If you'd like to print materials to share this information with friends and family, click here.

If you'd like to find out where to buy fair trade chocolate and other fair trade goods, click here.

If you'd like to read more updates about this project, click here.

Project- 826 San Diego

This is where we'll write an explanation of the 826 project, with a link to the TED talk.




If you'd like to read current updates about this project, click here.