We've been making Progress

Our second Vertical Food Wall at the Ray-Cam Cooperative Centre is built and we are busy getting ready to get the plants in the wall containers for our official launch of the wall set for 10:00am June 5, 2013.

HELP US FILL OUR NEW VERTICAL VEGETABLE GARDEN!

There is a new garden in the Vancouver, DTES community!  “Warren’s Wall” is a unique vertical vegetable garden, built by My Arms Wide Open® (MAWO), to support the food program at Ray-Cam Cooperative Centre in Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside.  Like its “sister food walls” in South Africa, Warren’s Wall will bring focus to community, food security and family.  It will provide a special learning opportunity for the children and youth at Ray-Cam to work side-by-side with the Centre’s seniors to plant, maintain and harvest the vertical garden. Other members of the Ray-Cam community will not only benefit from the garden’s harvests but will take joy in watching it grow. A portion of each harvest during the growing season will be canned or frozen for use in the Fall and Winter.

WE NEED YOUR HELP!

Our garden has room for 2,500 individual plants and we need your help to make it grow and flourish.

Be a member of the Carrot Club!  For as little as $15 every 3 months, you can adopt one plant.  Or, you can adopt several!  You can also choose a one-time donation in any amount you wish, or you may wish to become a special “Warren’s Wall Founding Patron” for $1,000.  

Visiting the wall: You can visit the wall in Vancouver by checking in with the staff at the Ray-Cam (920 East Hastings, Vancouver, BC V6A 3T1) who will be happy to show you around.

To set up your quartely recurring donation or make a new donation please visit: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/my-world-in-a-garden/

Quarterly donations on-line will repeat on an ongoing basis.  You will receive a tax receipt for the total amount of your donations in the previous year in February of the year following.  You may cancel at any time.

Each donor will also be credited with a plant in MAWO’s other vertical food walls in Bergnek and Cradock, two tiny rural communities in Eastern Cape, South Africa.  The gross proceeds from your donation will be split evenly between Ray-Cam and MAWO for ongoing support of the vertical food walls.

A Special 'Thank you!' to our Vancouver Community Partners

Our newest Wall at the Ray-Cam Community Cooperative could not have been possible without the tremendous support of our Vancouver Community partners including: Human Resources and Skills Development Canada, the City of Vancouver/Vancouver Foundation, Strathcona 1890: Urban Seed Project, Twin Lions Contracting, In-Form Engineering, Reliable Electric, UBC Civil Engineering and Craig Yates, a young structural fabricator, who did all the welding of the wall for us.

Let's Keep the Walls Growing!

Please keep spreading the word and if you can sponsor one or more of the plants in the walls on a quarterly basis. The quarterly donations keep the walls growing and new projects budding in each of the Ray-Cam and Bergnek Communities. To set up your quartely recurring donation or make a new donation please visit: http://www.globalgiving.org/projects/my-world-in-a-garden/

Thank you for your continued support!

Links:

• Ray-Cam Cooperative Centre and My Arms Wide Open break ground

My Arms Wide Open, My World My Garden, Vancouver

Good News!! The next My World My Garden vertical vegetable garden wall is about to take shape.

In conjunction with the support and funding we have received from you, our wonderful donors, we also took the step to apply for a grant from the Vancouver Foundation up in Vancouver, British Columbia, to keep the project moving and 'growing'.

The good news is that in December 2012 we were awarded $10,000 towards building the Sister Wall to our My World In a Garden, Bergnek community vertical vegetable garden that we completed in October 2012 and talked about in our last report.

Planning Stages

Right now we are in the planning stages of the Ray-Cam Cooperative Centre vertical vegetable garden and will have the specific location on the Ray-Cam site selected by February 15th. We will then be finalizing the construction schedule working with the Ray-Cam staff, youth and their families and are looking forward to brining you our next update as we progress and the Vancouver Sister Wall is completed.

Let's keep our My World My Garden Sister Walls moving and GROWING

The funding we have to date has certainly allowed us to move forward, however we still need your support. Please pass the word around, get friends involved, and get involved directly if you choose to, as a volunteer and experience it for yourself.

Please forward this message and join our mailing list to stay updated.

Links:

• My World In a Garden - Sister Walls