Localizing Yellowknife Food Demonstration Garden Project

The Cause

To work with the City of Yellowknife, the Yellowknife Food Charter Coalition, Ecology North, and the Yellowknife Farmers Market to create a centralized community demonstration food and medicinal plant garden for all community groups in the city of Yellowknife.
The Yellowknife Food Charter Coalition is a community volunteer based project interested in the implementation of the Yellowknife Food Charter. The Yellowknife Food Charter provides vision and principles that informs and guides all levels of government, businesses, non-government organizations, families, and individuals to plan for community food security. This past July 2015 the City Council of Yellowknife endorsed the Yellowknife Food Charter. The Yellowknife Food Charter Coalition is a collective made up of community groups, local business and individuals to work collaboratively to strengthen and enhance our local food system through education, demonstration, research and advocacy.

Who Will it Benefit?

We believe everyone in Yellowknife will benefit from a demonstration medicinal plant and food garden. The volunteers who will work at the garden will benefit by experiencing the healthy benefits of hard work that equal tangible results, as well as harvesting fresh and healthy food. The garden will provide a busy and popular summer \'outdoor classroom\' for hands-on experiential learning currently unavailable in the city of Yellowknife for learning how to grow food. The families of the volunteers & community groups will benefit by having affordable, fresh and healthy foods. The community benefits by having a local demonstration garden where they can volunteer and share in the fresh and healthy food. The planet benefits by having a \'learning\' garden where everyone can convene, that encourages community members to be more self-sustainable and have food security. Local demonstration gardens encourage a healthy food lifestyle, show northern gardening practices in action and help disseminate growing information and knowledge of plant varieties for our unique region.