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Community garden provides skills and nutrients

Fort William First Nation officials hosted the grand opening of their Gaa-Azhe-Anishinaabbeyya community garden Thursday afternoon.

THUNDER BAY -- A vegetable garden has provided a summer of both skills and nutrients for local First Nation community.

Fort William First Nation have been engaging community members that are associated with Ontario Works in the development of the Gaa-Azhe-Anishinaabbeyya community garden.

The garden has provided First Nations people with an opportunity to employ, engage and educate youth.

“We want to give people the motivation,” said Fort William First Nation Chief Peter Collins during the ribbon cutting ceremony Thursday afternoon.

“We want to motivate our people to understand how to produce their own product, how to build off the land, and how to utilize the land for creating a healthy lifestyle.”

Partners Roots to Harvest provided programming to enhance garden skills as well as skills necessary to harvest, cook and preserve food from the garden.

The skills gained by the participants working in the garden are transferable to a wide-range of employment positions and increase individual food resiliency.

“We are looking at different ideas as to where we go from here, because we would like to see this (garden) get bigger, but I mean we eventually we will have to move from this site as it’s pretty tight here,” Collins said.

“I mean it’s still an opportunity for us to grow and it’s still a very educational portion for us as we see what’s happened over the last couple of months.”

The food grown could also be used in cooking programs and with the Ontario Works Food Bank to increase community food security.

Ontario Works department manager Shannon Crews said the community garden is plays a crucial role in developing skills.

“It’s very important,” Crews said. “Not only did they build this garden from the bottom up, they get to eat the fruits of the labour and they learn skills.”

Crews added that the community garden was created because there was a lot of programming with no other avenues for the participants to go down.

“We created something that would further continue to build on their skills and make them more employable.”



Nicole Dixon

About the Author: Nicole Dixon

Born and raised in Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Nicole moved to Thunder Bay, Ontario in 2008 to pursue a career in journalism. Nicole joined Tbnewswatch.com in 2015 as a multimedia producer, content developer and reporter.
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