West End Residents Association

“Intentional Community: Shapes in Sharing” Workshop for the West End
11:00 am to 12:30 pm, Saturday, June 5, West End Community Centre

City dwellers have many skills and resources all around them, but may not have a mechanism for organizing and drawing on those skills in times of trouble. This class will look at the different shapes in sharing that take place so easily in rural communities and may need a boost in the city. We will talk about building trust and safeguarding our precious possessions while opening up to a wider community and its valuable support.

About Robin Wheeler
Robin Wheeler teaches traditional skills, sustenance gardening and medicinals at Edible Landscapes (www.ediblelandscapes.ca), a nursery and teaching garden in Roberts Creek, British Columbia.

Price and Registration
$15 per workshop. West End Community Centre: Register online (www.westendcc.ca), in person, or by calling (604-257-8333).

Contact: WestEndPrepare@shaw.ca

Join one or all six of these workshops by Robin Wheeler about food security, apartment gardening, and community. They are specially oriented toward urban dwellers living in apartments in Vancouver.

Green Millennium Foundation (GMF), Village Vancouver (VV), and West End Residents Association (WERA) are proud to present Robin Wheeler , author of Food Security for the Faint of Heart, and Gardening for the Faint of Heart, and founder of a local organic growers’ group (www.onestraw.ca) and the Sustainable Living Arts School (www.slas.ca) in a series of workshops on the food-secure household, gardening, food growing, and community organization, targeted especially for residents of the West End. The workshops will be held on one Sunday and two Saturdays at the West End Community Centre in Vancouver. For exact descriptions of each workshop, please visit the GMF.

April 11 (Sun) 10:00-11:30 am THE FOOD SECURE HOUSEHOLD
April 11 (Sun) 11:45-1:30 am APARTMENT GARDENING
May 1 (Sat) 9:15-10:30 am — FOOD DIRECTED EMERGENCY PREPAREDNESS
May 1 (Sat) 10:45 am- 12:15 pm — SEED SAVING IN THE CITY
June 5 (Sat) 9:15-10:45 am — FOOD PRESERVATION
June 5 (Sat) 11:00 am-12:30 pm — INTENTIONAL COMMUNITY – SHAPES IN SHARING.
Price: $15 per workshop. Anyone who registers for all six workshops will receive a bonus gift of their choice of either of Robin’s books.
Registration starts at 9 am on March 15. Register online (www.westendcc.ca), in person, or by calling (604-257-8333). You can download the Spring 2010 Guide. See page 22!
Special thanks! To the West End Community Centre Association for their support (venue and promo)!

The Vancouver Plant and Seed Exchange Network (VPSEN) aims to connect local gardeners with an enthusiasm for plant diversity. While one might ask what gardener, be it someone who has a yard, a community garden plot, a small balcony, or a sidewalk strip wouldn’t appreciate having a variety of plants in his or her garden, a number of barriers may exist: cost, access to suppliers, and lack of plant and gardening knowledge, to name a few. This project seeks to help alleviate these challenges by providing a space in which easy access to information will hopefully translate to tangible results (of the green kind). In addition to sharing their plants and seeds, we hope that members of this network will contribute to an open and respectful dialogue on the state of food in our city, biodiversity, urban land use, and to a collective knowledge which is only too vital for sustaining a healthy community. The VPSEN is an initiative of the Environmental Youth Alliance.
VPSEN

About 35 people showed up for an evening with Robin Wheeler (EdibleLandscapes) to hear about how people living on Vancouver’s densely populated downtown peninsula can turn their community into an edible landscape and grow more food for themselves. There was an active discussion and many ideas arose. A report and short video will be available soon. E-mail FoodWestEnd@-gmail.com if you’d like to follow future discussions.