The Hamilton Public Library is working to closely align with City initiatives and strategies. The City of Hamilton released a food strategy in 2018 in response to growing food scarcity concerns. It is estimated that families will begin to see unprecedented rises in the cost of groceries in the near future.We are working to build a large garden bed on casters that will live within the library. Local youth (ages 16-22) from a neighboring group home will help to take care of this garden and take whatever is harvested to prepare and eat at home. We are also hoping to do other educational programming with this garden so help and strategies to market and promote the garden would also be beneficial. We believe that this project could benefit from the assistance of students in many different avenues including: research as to the impacts of healthy eating and growing your own produce, marketing and outreach to expose the project to the broader Hamilton community and/or the construction and maintenance of the actual garden or consultation on best growing practices.
Goal(s): The ultimate goal is that a toolkit is put together encompassing a multitude of resources to continue to develop the Grow to Eat Better project locally at Waterdown and hopefully to expand the project to other neighborhood libraries in Hamilton.
City Staff: Alyssa Seul, Call-In, Hamilton Public Library
Faculty: Zobia Jawed, McMaster University
Course: TBA
Project Location: Hamilton Public Library
Strategic Priorities: Community Engagement and Participation, Healthy and Safe Communities, Clean and Green, Built Environment and Infrastructure
For more information on this project, check out the Project Agreement below!