Harvesting the Neighborhood for Fresh Fruit

by

Salud Heroes
Share On Social!

Two architecture and urban planning graduate students from the University of Texas San Antonio (UTSA) recognized good fruit from fruit trees were being left to rot in urban areas of San Antonio, Texas, (63.2% Latino), where many Latino families live in need of fresh foods. Working together for a class project, the friends created a blossoming non-profit to make sure families in need can access a variety of fresh fruit.

EMERGENCE

Awareness/Learn: In summer 2013, UTSA grad student Melissa Federspill started a class focused on health planning, called “Health in the Built Environment.”

Students in the class were advised to visualize solutions to inner-city health problems.

The class analyzed a predominately Latino neighborhood close to campus, the Avenue to Guadalupe neighborhood in the San Antonio’s West Side, for walkability, access to activity, eating habits, and health.

Federspill started learning about the neighborhood’s health issues, including diabetes.

West Side residents struggle with lack of access to healthy, fresh food, poverty, and many depend on food stamps, according to a recent SA Current article.

She also noticed in the neighborhood that fruit trees were blooming. But the fruit was falling to the ground, rotting and going uneaten.

As part of her class study, Federspill began mapping the neighborhood’s fruit trees, she found 80 fruit trees in her neighborhood’s front yards alone.

Volunteers harvesting a fruit tree. (Photo Source: San Antonio Fruit Tree Project's Facebook page, http://on.fb.me/1Sm0c8j)
Volunteers harvesting a fruit tree. (Photo Source: San Antonio Fruit Tree Project’s Facebook page, http://on.fb.me/1Sm0c8j)

Federspill also learned that mature fruit trees could produce up to 250 pounds of fresh fruit annually.

“I really realized that [fruit trees] really [are] a resource, not just in the West Side, but all over,” Federspill said. “And definitely a lot of food is wasted, and we have such a crisis for fresh fruit in the urban environment.”

Frame Issue:  As the class ended, Federspill decided to pursue an idea for change: Get access to local fruit trees, harvest the fruit, and use the produce to improve local residents’ diets and health.

“As I learned about the health issues that a lot of people who live in the inner city have the fruit trees were just one of those things that stood out to me as a solution,” Federspill said.

DEVELOPMENT

Education/Mobilization: Researching online about accessing fruit trees to use as a resource, Federspill found that many national and international organizations harvest unpicked fruit trees as a resource to bring fresh fruit and vegetables to urban communities.

Logo for San Antonio Fruit Tree Project. (Source: San Antonio Fruit Tree Project Facebook page)
Logo for San Antonio Fruit Tree Project. (Source: San Antonio Fruit Tree Project’s Facebook page)

She identified model programs in Portland, New Orleans, Seattle, and Canada.

Federspill realized there were many questions that still needed to be answered, and she needed assistance.

In summer 2013, she called a fellow classmate and friend, Mary Minor, to ask for help with the project.

Together they researched the model programs and pinpointed what was successful and sustainable in making the project last. They also reached out to other organizations across the state through email and learned about setting up harvest times, coordinating with people and volunteers, and how to donate harvested fruit.

They started to design the name and logo for their fruit tree-harvesting project: the San Antonio Fruit Tree Project.

They began to create marketing materials like an info pamphlet, a website page, and Twitter and Facebook pages. Their website also connected to a site called fallenfruit.org to allow people to incorporate trees into a map.

“So you can hone in on San Antonio and you see the trees that we mapped, but you can also see who else has put their trees there,” said Mino.

Screen shot from fallenfruit.org, showing where fruit trees are located.
Screen shot from fallenfruit.org, showing where fruit trees are located.

Reaching out to San Antonio Food Bank; they found that they could easily donate harvested fruit.

The Food Bank was happy to receive their call and their offer to harvest fruit trees in San Antonio, as many people had actually called the food bank asking for volunteers to come and harvest their fruit trees.

“It was a natural relationship, and they are so well organized and have such a great set-up that we were able to ask them to create a SKU (stock keeping unit) number for us so that we could track our pounds [of fruit], and so we could conceivably see where the fruit was going,” Minor said. 

Debate:  Originally, the program’s plan was to harvest fruit trees for all of urban San Antonio, and they started harvesting fruit in the King William District of San Antonio in winter 2013.

They quickly realized that they would have to start smaller, where they could make the most impact.

“We were super ambitious, but ultimately, we found our way to the eastside,” Minor said. “There’s a strong group of local activism already there, and we need to create this model of how the program is going to work so that we can show the rest of San Antonio that this is exactly what we are about.”

The program chose to focus in on one area, Dignowity Hill, where there were support and local activism in place to create a strong model.

“Our realization was that we couldn’t be spread super thin across the entire city and really make it work,” Federspill said. “We really need to raise up individuals in the neighborhood that would be in charge of that, because it turns out there’re trees everywhere.”

ENACTMENT

Activation/Frame Issue: The team planned their project to have a team member drive through a neighborhood, survey and map the trees in the neighborhood, and ask residents if and when they can harvest their trees. After setting a schedule for harvesting the trees in each neighborhood, they coordinate harvest dates with volunteers.

Federspill knew having dependable volunteers and leaders to harvest was an important step for their project, so they reached out to the Dignowity Hill community to find stakeholders, they visited the local community center, senior center, and advertised at farmers markets to create relationships and build a network of stakeholders ready to lead and volunteer in the neighborhood’s harvesting efforts.

They connected with community garden coordinators, who helped provide an introduction into neighborhoods. Then they also visited owners of fruit trees and decided to advertise their project at the Dignowity Hill Farmers’ Market to generate interest and get volunteers to sign up for harvesting days.

Young girl volunteers promoting San Antonio Fruit Tree Project. (Photo Source: San Antonio Fruit Tree Project's Facebook page)
Young girl volunteers promoting San Antonio Fruit Tree Project. (Photo Source: San Antonio Fruit Tree Project’s Facebook page)

“[Dignowity Hill has] incredible community activists for community gardens and neighborhood improvement, and they’re on board with the utilization of what’s already being produced in the neighborhood,” Federspill said.

They also added an additional member to the project team, Mary Pawlak, who works in health statistics with the U.S. Air Force.

The next step was to look for funding.

In September 2014, they applied for the Awesome SA grant, where $1,000 is provided to support local small organizations or businesses get started.

They were approved for the grant and decided to make a video explaining the San Antonio Fruit Tree Project on their website, encouraging volunteers, and tree mappers to get on board.

Fruit donation to owners of fruit tree saying thank you. (Source: San Antonio Fruit Tree Project's Facebook Page)
Fruit donation to owners of fruit tree saying thank you. (Source: San Antonio Fruit Tree Project’s Facebook Page)

“We’re pretty in tune with different organizations, especially local urban organizations,” Minor said. “So, we really tapped into as many of those that we could.”

Change:  The San Antonio Fruit Tree Project started harvesting in Dignowity Hill throughout 2014. After the fruit is harvested and collected, it is distributed with the community or donated to the SA Food Bank, which uses a SKU number to trace how many pounds of fruit are being donated.

In 2014, they harvested more than 500 pounds of fresh fruit.

“We were or are on target with [model] organizations [whose first-year harvests] were between 300 to 500 pounds of fruit,” Minor said. “I think that was a real eye-opener for us.”

IMPLEMENTATION

Implementation: Federspill and Minor continue working in neighborhoods to create leaders who will lead groups to harvest fruit trees, provide the fruit for the community, and donate the rest to the Food Bank.

On their website video, they shout out together: “Our mission is, no good fruit goes to waste.”

The San Antonio Fruit Trees goal is stated on their website as well, “to provide a community-based solution to a critical and growing need for direct access to healthy food, through a neighborhood harvesting program. The San Antonio Fruit Tree Project aims to educate and inspire the public to grow, steward, and utilize fruit trees.”

Equity:  They hope to continue providing for those in need by building a community and a network around the idea that these fruit trees can be a good resource not only for healthy fresh foods in urban areas but also around building community efforts.

“We are just as much about social capital as we are about eating healthy food,” Federspill said.

Sustainability:  Federspill and Minor began a Kickstarter campaign last year through UTSA, and have gained great support towards their project.

They also visited the SA Area Foundation and attended a grant-writing workshop to get the advice of the best local resources, analyze their project and grant proposals and point out places they might want to apply to for grants for in the future.

“They encouraged us and gave us the pointers for the 501c3, so it’s a really good resource for start-ups,” Federspill said. “The area foundation gives you a lot of info.”

Mary and Melissa explain the San Antonio Fruit Tree Project to members of Cafe Commerce. (Photo Source: Ricardo Grimaldi's Facebook page).
Mary and Melissa explain the San Antonio Fruit Tree Project to members of Cafe Commerce. (Photo Source: Ricardo Grimaldi’s Facebook page).

The plans for 2016 consist of applying for more grants, hiring a coordinator and working to become an official 501c3 non-profit organization. Also, a new urban gardening zone amendment to the City’s Unified Development Code was passed in December 2015, allowing people to not only grow their own food in urban areas but also eat and sell their fresh food products.

Federspill explained that this new opportunity instills in people an idea of their own micro-economy, opening the door to the idea of fruit trees being assets in the local economy and community.

“It’s such a resource that we have to make it sustainable, and the current model that we have, lends itself to that,” said Federspill.

After feedback from Café Commerce, a local organization that supports small start-ups, they received advice to make the organization a private organization, or small business; however, they plan on keeping the San Antonio Fruit Tree Project a resource for fresh foods for communities in need.
“I guess that there was a lot of confidence that it could be a sustainable business model in a private sector but both of our hearts are in the non-profit sector and we really feel like none of us are in this to make money,” said Federspill. “We really just want to improve the access to healthy foods and healthy environments, and to improve people’s social and community connections.”

This success story was produced by Salud America! with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The stories are intended for educational and informative purposes. References to specific policymakers, individuals, schools, policies, or companies have been included solely to advance these purposes and do not constitute an endorsement, sponsorship, or recommendation. Stories are based on and told by real community members and are the opinions and views of the individuals whose stories are told. Organization and activities described were not supported by Salud America! or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and do not necessarily represent the views of Salud America! or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

ABOUT THE PROGRAM

Salud America! The RWJF Research Network to Prevent Obesity Among Latino Children is a national program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. The program aims to educate researchers, decision-makers, community leaders, and the public in contributing toward healthier Latino communities and seeking environmental and policy solutions to the epidemic of Latino childhood obesity. The network is directed by the Institute for Health Promotion Research at the University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio.

For more information, visit http://www.salud-america.org.

By The Numbers By The Numbers

1

Supermarket

for every Latino neighborhood, compared to 3 for every non-Latino neighborhood

This success story was produced by Salud America! with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

The stories are intended for educational and informative purposes. References to specific policymakers, individuals, schools, policies, or companies have been included solely to advance these purposes and do not constitute an endorsement, sponsorship, or recommendation. Stories are based on and told by real community members and are the opinions and views of the individuals whose stories are told. Organization and activities described were not supported by Salud America! or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and do not necessarily represent the views of Salud America! or the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

Share your thoughts