The Garden Kitchen Works to Engage in New Ways

Trauma-informed community engagement is at the center of The Garden Kitchen’s public health work. To accomplish this, The Garden Kitchen staff takes the time to create authentic relationships in communities, actively listen to what communities want, and involve communities in planning our programming. We work to honor our neighbors’ lived knowledge and learn about cultural traditions. We are happy to share some of our recent successes in this area, both locally and at the state level. One example relates to small food entrepreneurs and their need for help in growing their businesses. The City of Tucson listened, creating the small business entrepreneurship program, Sazon Empresarial. We were honored to be part of this program, acting as a liaison to the university, providing a physical space for education, and consulting on the programming itself. The first class graduated in August and there are plans to refine the program, through collaboration with graduates, and run additional cohorts soon. The Garden Kitchen also worked to involve communities and extension units around the state in creating new recipes for Arizona Health Zone. In the past, this process had been contracted to a chef and the recipes were created in isolation. This year, The Garden Kitchen took the time to have extension units, both rural and urban, ask their communities what recipes and ingredients they wanted to see included. Over 200 community members responded to a survey and the results formed the basis for Extension staff in five counties to develop the final versions and conduct taste testing to determine which recipes would be featured on the website. We look forward to refining this process and involving even more community members when determining recipe content and testing recipes in the future.

Photo: Graduation ceremony for Sazon Empresarial, August 2022

Does Gardening Impact

Health Outcomes?

Exciting news from the Pima County Cooperative Extension (PCCE) horticulture program! In July we learned that a “Harvest for Health” research proposal that our horticulture agent helped draft, was funded. Principle Investigator Dr. Meghan Skiba, who is an Assistant Professor in the Biobehavioral Health Science Division in the College of Nursing, will be piloting the “Harvest for Health” program for the first time in Arizona with PCCE and generous funding from the University of Arizona-Health Science SensorLab. The “Harvest for Health” program involves gardening intervention for cancer survivors who have completed their primary cancer treatment. The goals of the project are to identify interested participants and to engage them with gardening to measure the impact of gardening on health outcomes. PCCE will be involved as educators activating the training and knowledge of Master Gardener program volunteers and the agent to introduce participants to the core concepts and skills necessary to garden successfully in Southern Arizona. The project will also involve Community Gardens of Tucson, a 30-year local non-profit with roots in Extension so that participants can participate by growing and maintaining their own vegetable plots. Anyone interested in learning more about Harvest for Health can email: CON-FRESH@arizona.edu

4-H Enrollment

Starts In October

Are you, or is a youth in your family, interested in joining 4-H? You can start by finding a club on our PCCE 4-H Website. Once there, you will find a map showing all 29 clubs available in Pima County, and when you click on a particular club it will lead you to a page that shows what projects that club offers. This page will also have club leader contact information. Once you decide which club you’d like to join based on the location and projects offered, you can contact the club leader to let them know you are interested in joining. After you have contacted the club, you must then enroll through ZSuite With only a $20 annual enrollment fee, this is a wonderful and inexpensive way to create an active learning and growth opportunity all year long. If you have already been a 4-H member, you will need to re-enroll by logging into your ZSuite account. First, make sure you’ve selected the primary household account, and then click on the name of the youth member to see the continue enrollment button. From there, make sure all the information is up to date, including your club’s name and the projects you will be participating in this year. 

We look forward to you joining us here at Pima County 4-H. Happy Enrolling!  Contact Ashlea Gideon at agideon@arizona.edu if you need any assistance.