Improving Health and Reducing Violence Through Urban Gardens Brazil Princeton University Courtney Crumpler '13 and Sarah Simon '13

Cultivating Restorative Spaces: Improving Health and Reducing Violence through Urban Gardens Brazil Princeton University Courtney Crumpler '13 and Sarah Simon '13 Rocinha, Rio de Janeiro’s largest favela (slum neighborhood), is home to 100,000 of the city’s poorest residents, many of whom experience conditions of limited access to resources and social exclusion. This marginalized position is compounded by violence stemming from the drug and arms trade that promotes a culture of social violence and female objectification, dominating youth culture and impeding positive social change. Food insecurity, which leads to nutritional deficiencies and poor health, is a chief symptom of Rocinha’s marginalized social position. Rocinha’s residents may be nutrient deficient even though they consume sufficient or excess calories, causing child and adolescent stunting, even while obesity is on the rise. These problems persist in Rocinha because there is little to no emphasis on preventative medicine or nutrition education in schools. In the past month police forces have moved into Rocinha in an attempt to pacify the neighborhood before the World Cup in 2014. While we are hopeful that these campaigns will stabilize Rocinha, resolving historical inequalities and developing a healthy community will require a collaborative effort between community activists, Non-Governmental Organizations and the municipal government. The detrimental effects of food insecurity and violence upon health, economic freedom, and education constitute a social violence that targets favela residents. Our project will promote peace through the amelioration of food insecurity and resulting social violence by confronting issues of health and nutrition. Through an innovative urban agriculture project, we will work to reduce community violence and foster solidarity among at-risk youth and women. Using rooftop gardens as a vehicle for community mobilization, we will work to create safe spaces in Rocinha where people feel empowered to participate in and improve both their health statuses and their neighborhood security. We plan to mobilize the community to build four rooftop gardens as well as design and implement a nutritional educational curriculum for those who participate in the project. By providing Rocinha residents with better health education, opportunities to grow cheap and healthy food, and a safe community constructed around principles of wellness, we will empower the residents to create peace by providing them with the resources to develop an agricultural network and halt the cycle of community violence. We will begin by establishing ourselves in the community, working with existing institutions in Rocinha that already have developed a strong base. Our first garden will be a rooftop community garden developed out of a partnership with local NGOs. After establishing this garden, we will move on to grow three additional smaller gardens atop individual apartment buildings that are developed and maintained by the families within. Starting with a large community garden will allow us to build momentum and address our educational goals, but building smaller gardens will demonstrate that urban gardening is an individually sustainable and healthy option, transferring more of the responsibility for the gardens to community members. All of the gardens will serve as a supportive space for the young people most at risk of becoming involved in gang violence. We hope to create a safe place where youths can foster meaningful relationships with one another, addressing issues of gender inequalities and female objectification. We plan to teach the basics of nutrition and the history of prevalent issues of food insecurity in the area in order for participants to understand the values and ideology behind urban agriculture. As we create the gardens, we will offer lessons on practices relevant to the work we are doing, such as a discussion about soil quality as we plant seeds, or composting practices as we set up a composting unit. We will get feedback from family food purchasers on how to best meet their needs as we continue to develop our curriculum. As we begin to produce food, we will start teaching cooking classes and organizing community dinners, focused around discussions of topics about health and community development proposed by participants. We have two NGO contacts in Rocinha, Instituto Dois Irmãos and Vira Mundo, that have both conveyed interest and willingness to provide rooftop space and support for our first community garden. Another resource is a current Masters student in International Development at Oxford, who has seven months of experience living and working in Rocinha on health-related issues with NGOs and the Brazilian government, and has offered to help us develop our project. In addition, two Princeton professors will be based in Rio over the summer and have conveyed their interest and support. Courtney also traveled to Rio for two weeks this January for another research project and was able to meet with the NGOs and community activists engaged in similar projects in other parts of the city. Through initially working with institutions, we will make use of the community support structures already in place to ensure the continued implementation of our project. Gardens are very easily sustained as long as people believe in them and are committed to the simple manual labor they require. Currently, the inhabitants of Rocinha are overwhelmingly dependent upon grocery stores and packaged food, and it will take time for our gardens to produce enough food to make a real difference to this financial and nutritional burden. Once we develop community trust and involvement to begin the gardens, the result of fresh vegetables by the end will provide their own incentive. We plan to initially plant crops that mature rapidly and grow successfully in Rio's climate, like lettuce and tomatoes, to provide quick and satisfying results, as well as plants that will develop more slowly like eggplants and cucumbers. The very nature of a garden is deeply connected to sustainability. After one successful crop, community members can begin saving seeds, pickling and preserving excess produce, and using the vegetables for events in the garden to demonstrate the benefits of fresh food procured cheaply, safely, and independently. Due to Rio's warm climate, the garden can continue producing food year round, preventing the issue of losing momentum during the non-growing season. We anticipate that spending extensive amounts of time in the community working together with project participants will be our most successful implementation tactic. We will track the number of hours we are spending working directly with community members and establish regular weekly meetings with each garden community from the beginning, with specific days set aside for certain groups (young women, youths, family food providers). We would like for participants to feel confident enough in their gardening skills to implement and maintain their own projects, to learn how to cook using fresh produce, and to share recipes with each other and their families. We also want to foster a strong garden community so that each garden feels like a safe and constantly available space for participants to work, relax and communicate. By working within existing community structures, we hope to leave the garden with a strong support system of trained garden managers. We plan to set up a regular schedule of communication with the garden managers and will help to keep them accountable to the work plan we will develop together toward the end of the summer. We will also set up a blog and encourage participants to write in order to share their experiences with the larger urban agriculture community in Brazil and the US. We will be engaged in this process as translators of posts written in Portuguese, and by writing about our own experiences. Lastly, Princeton is sending more students to Rio de Janeiro every summer, with a new annual Portuguese program beginning this August, and through our contacts in the Portuguese department we hope to begin and establish a tradition of Princeton students working in these gardens. Our research at this point does not reveal any similar project to the one we are proposing currently being conducted in Rocinha, however, many groups are working in the field of urban agriculture in other parts of Rio. We have consulted the websites of numerous organizations, including Grupo Santa Horta, Horta Urbana, and the Council on Nutrition and Food Security of Rio de Janeiro, who are conducting research and publishing their findings and project activities online. The energy around this issue creates a favorable climate for our project. Throughout the process we will serve as enthusiastic founding members of the garden organizations and will work alongside community members at every step. We will not arrive as the managers and directors of four gardens in Rocinha, but rather will present our ideas and plans to stakeholders throughout the community. We will search for leaders with whom we share a vision for effective empowerment work closely with them to implement the project and ensure sustainability. Our vision of peace cannot be attained by a paternalistic or overly prescriptive approach, but rather, by enabling residents to develop the skills and knowledge in order to build a healthy community for themselves. Through the development of urban rooftop gardens, we will promote peace by improving health and reducing violence, addressing food insecurity and malnutrition along with the creation of restorative and safe community spaces. .

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