Encouraging food localization

Cultivating Community Advocates (CCA), a sub-organization of Cultivating Community North Valley, has awarded a total of $27,889 in grant funding to three local nonprofit organizations as part of its 2013 Food Security Competitive Grant Program.

The grants—which were awarded to Catalyst Domestic Violence Services, the Jesus Center and the Work Training Center—“are part of a larger 2012 Specialty Crop Block Grant from the California Department of Food and Agriculture,” as a CCA press release described them.

According to CCA, Catalyst will use its $7,900 grant to “fund a nutrition specialist who will lead meal workshops at Catalyst’s emergency shelter in order to increase knowledge and access to nutrition, locally grown fruits and vegetables for shelter residents and their children.”

Similarly, the Jesus Center plans to use the $10,000 it was awarded “to provide job training at the Jesus Center Community Farm to homeless individuals through growing produce for sale and for consumption at the center.” And the Work Training Center’s $9,989 award will be used “to create a vegetable garden and orchard to teach adults with developmental disabilities about healthier food choices and sustainable practices, and to encourage self-reliance.”

The purpose of the CCA’s Food Security Competitive Grant Program “is to encourage food localization and to support food security within the Butte County farming area, and specifically within communities with historic barriers to access (sometimes referred to as ‘access-challenged populations,’ or ACPs),” said CCA Project Coordinator Sue Hilderbrand in the press release.

This was the second and final round of CCA grants awarded for 2013. Recipients of the $44,000 awarded last spring in the first round were: Jarvis Gardens Senior Apartments, Second Baptist Church, Love Chapmantown Community Coalition, South Oroville’s African-American Family & Cultural Center, and Westside Domestic Violence Shelter in nearby Glenn County.

The great miraculous bell of translucent ice is suspended in mid-air.

It rings to announce endings and beginnings. And it rings because there is fresh promise and wonder in the skies.

Its clear tones resound in the placid silence of the winter day, and echo long into the silver-blue serenity of night.

The bell can only be seen at the turning of the year, when the days wind down into nothing, and get ready to march out again.

When you hear the bell, you feel a tug at your heart.

It is your immortal inspiration.

— Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration