Eastside Pantry Brigade celebrates Earth Day with garden dedication

Volunteers water the new Union Corners raised beds.On April 22, the Eastside Pantry Brigade celebrated Earth Day by dedicating a new garden location on Madison’s near eastside.

The Eastside Pantry Brigade (EPB) is an organization that recruits at-risk, low-income teenagers from youth agencies in Madison to help grow, harvest, and distribute food from local pantry gardens to Madison food pantries and soup kitchens.

The organization helps service a network of school, business, and public gardens around Madison and then delivers food sometimes goes to waste because there are not enough distribution channels in the area.

The new garden, Union Corners, is located on the corner of Milwaukee Street and East Washington Avenue. It is one of many gardens that the Eastside Pantry Brigade and its teams of teens take care of.

The morning began at 10 a.m. with volunteers planting ten raised garden beds. Many of those volunteers were teens from Mentoring Positives, a Madison youth mentoring organization that will be managing the Union Corners garden this year.

The group will primarily be maintaining the beds, helping harvest the produce, and delivering it to local pantries. Mentoring Positives creator Will Green described the project as a forum to engage kids in the community growing local produce and as job employment for them.

 “The best thing about working on a project like this is the community building. It’s great to get your hands dirty and rub elbows with other community residents that you normally don’t come in contact with. In doing so, you find similarities which help build community,” said Mentoring Positives lead farmer Alan Chancellor.

After the garden beds were built and refreshments were distributed, a dedication ceremony began at 2 p.m. Speakers included Mentoring Positives farmer Alan Chancellor, Sixth District Alder Marsha Rummel, Community Action Coalition member Chris Brockel, and Dane County Executive Joe Parisi.

“We are planting the seeds today in hopes of better futures for the youth of tomorrow,” Chancellor said to start off the dedication. He continued to speak on behalf of the Eastside Pantry Brigade’s hopes for everyone in the Madison area to have access to safe and nutritious food on a very local level.

During County Executive Joe Parisi’s speech, he commented on EPB’s goals within for the community.

“Local foods are vital to economy and quality of life we have here. The young people who are volunteering here today are such a good example of when we see a need, we come together and work it out,” said Parisi.

Along with upkeep of the gardens, the at-risk youth volunteers will also benefit from the produce.

“Earth Day and environmental degradation affects everything and everyone, but affects low-income communities more than others,” said Brockel. “To be able to do something like this garden project to connect folks back to the earth and so they can have control of their food is a wonderful thing.”

Dedication group cheers for the new garden.Brockel shared that over 132,000 pounds of food were donated to Madison food pantries just last year. This year, the EPB hopes to beat that number and also provide information about where the food comes from and why it is a healthy choice for pantry users.

“This is a movement that can to help change Madison, and it can all start with us,” Green said in his closing remarks.

If you are interested in volunteering with the Eastside Pantry Brigade or donating space for a garden, call or email Joe Mingle at 608-332-1493 or jwmingle@tds.net.