Hey everyone! Rob Greenfield here and,
right now, I'm standing in a church yard.
And this church yard is an amazing example
of what can be done across the nation.
Now, churches own millions of acres of land.
And that land can be used to create more
sustainable, food sovereign communities
and make sure that our neighbors are well fed.
Now that's the vision of pastor Sarah Robinson, my friend.
And not only her vision, but what she is
actually doing here.
Our vision is to become a model of sustainability
for faith communities all around the world.
The Bible says we are to care for the earth.
But regardless of what you believe,
we feel that what we are doing, here, is something
that anyone can do.
So one of the things that we realize is
we have a lot of unused space on the property,
and we wanted to use it more intentionally.
And so, we partnered with a local
organization called Fleet Farming.
Their motto is 'grow food, not lawns'.
They make people's front yards into gardens,
and they have swarms of volunteers that they gather to care for those gardens.
And the people who live there are able to
take what they would like from the vegetable garden
and the rest goes to local farmer's markets and chefs.
And all that goes back into the community.
And so our garden, here, one of their largest,
actually, we open it to the community.
Anyone can come and take vegetables from our garden.
Taking advantage of the space we have,
we also partnered with Rob Greenfield
and the Live Like Ally Foundation
to put over 25 fruit trees on the property.
And these are community fruit trees
for anyone to access. They are also listed on fallingfruit.org.
And I'm excited to see, in a few years,
when we will literally have hundreds of
pounds of fruit that everyone can have access to.
Another way we build community is by
hosting the Orlando Permaculture Group.
A gathering of people from all over central Florida
to learn from each other about how to live
with the principles of permaculture.
I describe permaculture as paying attention to how nature does things
and working with, and mimicking nature
to make sure all of life can thrive.
Now, you might not have a group like
Orlando Permaculture but there are
sustainable groups of various kinds everywhere.
And it's a great way to bring the community together.
This garden, right behind me, is a
pollinator garden planted by
Fleet Farming and volunteers.
And it helps work with the vegetable
garden in bringing important, vital pollinators to the area.
On top of all this, we also want to live more sustainably inside the building.
So, even though it's more work,
we have made the commitment to eliminate
one time use tableware, plates, cups, plastic ware,
to compost, to recycle.
We believe this is an important part of caring for the earth
as well as caring for each other.
What if every church and place of worship
would do something similar?
It would change the world
and I'm excited for that!
(Music playing)
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