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The Can You Dig It initiative is about socially marginalized individuals together with their community transforming urban spaces into agricultural bounties, and collectively giving back to others.
Can You Dig It invites individuals who have been marginalized and their community to establish a food-growing garden at their home and to coordinate community gardens in collaboration with their neighbours: a powerful way of facilitating community inclusion, empowerment, and to be part of a community where everyone belongs!
Can You Dig It invites you to regard every member of the community as invaluable social and economic assets, as persons with gifts, abilities and contributions to make. Through taking active role in their community gardens, people who have been marginalized can then become the binding agents bringing people together with the ultimate goal of bettering the community. Together, we can all plant a seed!
The Mission:
- Promote urban agriculture.
- Empower marginalized individuals and expose the community to their skills and abilities.
- Facilitate social inclusion and create meaningful networks within the community.
- Contribute to the community by giving back a percentage of the yield of each garden to food depots to assist the economically disadvantaged.
Impacts
Gardening has been a mainstay of traditional tools for community building; it enables people of diverse backgrounds to interact over a common vision, a shared goal, and a communal activity.
This initiative has innumerable positive impacts, including:
- It results in demonstrated therapeutic effects for participants (physical and psychological wellbeing).
- It fosters a culture of social, civic, and environmental mindfulness.
- It results in persons who have been marginalized receiving valuable training that leads to full economic inclusion.
- It erases stigma by demonstrating the abilities of marginalized individuals to contribute to the betterment of their communities.
- It leads to the creation of meaningful, self-sustaining networks within community, which will strengthen local communities, makes them safer, and foster a true sense of belonging.
- It promotes environmentally responsible and sustainable land-use while providing more economic and healthier nutritional options and improving food security for our communities, including assistance for the economically disadvantaged.
Please contact canyoudigit@posAbilities.ca to get involved and to learn more about the project.
Can You Dig It, an urban agriculture and community engagement initiative.
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