Empower Youth Through Gardening!

We are kicking off a month long campaign to raise a minimum of $6,000.00 to get a garden that will help empower local high school youth at San Gabriel High School learn how to grow and run a garden business selling herbs, flowers, and nursery plants. Please click on the "Herbaflor" link to find out more and help us get this garden in the ground!

KCAMP Fundraiser for School Garden Project

This Saturday we are having a fundraiser for Kingdom Causes Alhambra - Monterey Park. This free concert from the touring group of 60 college students from the University of Sioux Falls should be a treat for the ears, and will be followed by a light reception.

The love offering will go towards a new garden project we're starting at one of our local high schools, San Gabriel High School. It's still part of Alhambra Unified, even though the address is in San Gabriel. Out of the three high schools, this school has a higher percentage of low-income families represented, with a predominantly Asian and Latino student population.

This project will be more ambitious than previous gardens, as it will be a social enterprise garden: we are looking to grow herbs in the space that could be sold to farmers' markets, restaurants, and other venues. The idea is to create a sustainable business that students can become intimately involved in as well as integrating school standards and other groups on campus.

So far we have gotten off a good start, with strong buy-in from the principal, the business academy, and the environmental science teacher. Now we're looking at getting in buy-in from you!

If you'd like to donate, please do so online: http://citynet.org/donate-to-city-net/

Thank you to all who pray and support the work!

New Year, New Gardens

Brightwood Garden Site

 They will say, “This land that was laid waste has become like the garden of Eden; the cities that were lying in ruins, desolate and destroyed, are now fortified and inhabited.” (Ezekiel 36:35)

I know it's been awhile since I've blogged anything, but Happy New Year and here's to more regular blogposts as a resolution!

Last year, I helped lead a project to plant one school garden in Alhambra School District. This year, we'll be starting three more!

The planting of gardens was the primary reason I started working for Kingdom Causes. In the prophetic books, it stood as a metaphor: for Eden, for beauty and abundance and also as a foil to the desert of destruction of Israel's cities as they became subject to the nations around them.

Working in the city you realize that prosperity is often measured by economic development and increasing revenues; after all, you can't have good property values, good businesses, police, fire, schools, etc. if you have a city struggling to keep itself running. And while I'm all for good economic development, I also see that beauty and abundance cannot only be measured by that one factor.

Seeking the shalom of a city should also mean that questions of beauty and access to natural beauty are not just afterthoughts. Cities have a way of creating desolation in the name of prosperity. My goals with these gardens is to help create pockets of Eden to remind our urban selves that we are also part of a Kingdom that has beauty and abundance that sustains the body and soul.

Repetto Garden Site