BSC Community Garden Fund
Black Spring CLE is a Black-led community response group dedicated to defunding and dismantling the Greater Cleveland area police force, through the work of Protest, Education and Building the Community Alternative to policing today.
So far we have launched our "Balance the Budget" protest campaign to help citizens visualize the disparity in tax dollar spending on police rather than other public services. Soon we will launch an education video series that will breakdown complex, localized topics like Cleveland's consent decree to help everyone develop a better sense of how we got here and what needs to be done to fix it. And to build a sustainable and inclusive community alternative to policing, we believe creating a community garden in a predominantly Black neighborhood is a strong first step.
A community garden will first and foremost bring fresh produce to food deserts and empower others with the know-how to create their own gardens at home. By having a physical, unified location, we can also provide better community support though hosting health and wellness events, personal safety training, childcare, food drives, etc sooner than we could without one. Additionally, the garden will give us another avenue to partner with similarly-minded organizations and people already doing the work, which is a difficult task in one of the most segregated cities in the nation.
We hope that you will support Black Spring CLE in this first of many-to-come efforts.
Tentative Timeline
Week of June 28th - Location Scouting
Week of July 5th - Lot Selection
Weeks of July 12th & 19th - Garden Building
Week of July 26th - Garden Opening
Funds will go towards:
Land Cost
General Liability Insurance
Soil Probe
Seeds + Soil + Start water
Building materials
Chicken Wire & Fencing
Raised Beds (10)
Greenhouse
Rain Barrels
Additional funds raised will go towards GoFundMe processing fees, labor and incidental costs.
Please email us at [email redacted] to arrange in-kind donations, resources and support. As part of our eventual transparency report, we are using a GoFundMe account as act as a 3rd party that holds donations as we apply for a nonprofit status.