About the Project

The following audio-visual presentation will give you an overview of this project. The background voice is an audio interview which was recorded on September 15th 2010 and aired first on Radio Canada International (RCI). The reporter is Lyne Francoise Pelletier.

More on this Project

June 14 2010, at the Wychwood Barns, a multicultural intergenerational garden became a new landscape of this popular urban park. The garden is tended by 35 newcomer youth and senior participants representing seven ethnocultural groups: South Asian, Somali, Italian, Latin American, Polish, Filipino, and Chinese. The Global Roots Garden is a partnership project between The Stop Community Food Centre and CultureLink, with support of other organizations such as the South Asian Women's Centre. This project will span the entire outdoor season to late October and possibly even extend to the Winter.

Goals of the Global Roots Garden:

• Facilitate the integration of newcomers into the broader community, and to raise awareness about the contributions of newcomers and integration issues
• Highlight food growing traditions from around the world, applicable to small scale urban spaces
• Facilitate intergenerational interaction and knowledge transfer through involvement of senior and youth participants; provide leadership opportunities for both seniors and youth
• Educate broader community about organic food growing techniques through signage, tours, workshops, and events in the garden which is located in a high traffic public space
• Involve participants who may normally face barriers to involvement through provision of tokens, honorariums, and language translation
• Provide fresh food for gardeners and meal programs at The Stop

Click to read The Star's report on the Global Roots Garden