Current Projects

Help End World Hunger One Family At A Time

501(C)(3) - Non Profit Organization

CODEP Haiti Fund Project
The goal of this project is to provide the means for the population of approximately 500 families to achieve food security, while reclaiming the eroded and barren hillsides. The first step will be to install 38 Abundant Harvest Gardens. (Some of these will be at a school serving over 175 students). This is a micro-intensive growing system that uses 20% of the water a conventional garden and it provides sufficient produce for a family of four in a 4' x 4' space.

These gardens will provide food, serve as a micro-nursery for the propagation of trees for use in the reclamation of the hillsides, and as a means of generating income by growing herbs and other produce for sale in local markets.

The Abundant Harvest Garden not only will provide food relief, it will also provide food security. This project will educate and train each person on how to grow and harvest produce so that they will have food on a continuing basis. This system can provide an ongoing food supply rather than a day or week of emergency food relief. The community can learn to become independent by providing their own food and as previously stated and generate income by selling their produce in local markets.

Greater Albuquerque Habitat for Humanity Garden Project
We are seeking funding to create model family gardening and nutrition programs for minority and low income families in the greater Albuquerque area. These gardens will be a continuation the program that had a successful beginning in 2003.
Our specific objective is to ensure that all the families that are covered by this project participate in the establishment of an Abundant Harvest Garden, learn to grow their own produce and maintain the garden throughout the growing season.

Our measurable objective is to monitor the production of produce to feed all those that participate in these projects. In addition, we hope the success of these projects, will lead to more opportunities in other areas.

One of the most significant aspects of this project is the fact that it is a family gardening experience. Children from 2 to 16 are engaged in the cultivation of healthy fresh vegetables. We also learned much about what education needs to accompany the garden planting and what follow-up information sharing can accomplish. In 2004 the gardeners from 2003 will serve as mentors for the new gardeners.

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Kenya Aids Orphanages

Four 4'x4' Abundant Harvest Gardens, plans to expand the project in late 2004

In June Rev. Dick Mattern received the first two gardens for a pilot project at an AIDS orphanage in Kenya. The first garden was planted at an orphanage in Nairobi in October and is doing well. The second was just planted in December. Two more gardens were sent late in the year and will be planted at a different site early in 2004.

Center for Action and Contemplation, Juarez, Mexico
This project is to provide food security for approximately 100 families living in some of the poorest colonias of Cuidad Juarez, Mexico. They are living in homes build on top of garbage dumps, some of the homes are literally constructed from used pallets. Our goals, as partners in this project are to:

1. Provide a safe and efficient growing system to empower these women become at least partially self-sufficient and food secure, and achieve food security for their families.

2. Improve the general nutrition of these women and their families. By improving the diet we can help to provide the means to break the poverty cycle. Infant and childhood nutrition can have a permanent effect on the mental and physical development. This can preclude any opportunities for education to make a difference.

3. Several of the gardens will be used in the Las Mujeres de Esperanza y Fe (The Women of Hope and Faith) Women’s Center for the production of culinary and medicinal herbs, fruit trees and shrubs. This will provide opportunities for extra income from the sale of the plants and herbs harvested.

Santa Ana Pueblo Project

We are seeking funding to create two nutrition projects at the Santa Ana Pueblo near Albuquerque, New Mexico. These projects will involve both a school and a senior center. The objective is to use the Abundant Harvest Gardens (AHG), and the food produced to improve and provide diet and nutrition training. These projects are important due to a near epidemic incidence of diabetes in the Native American populations, caused in great part by nutritionally poor diets.

Many of the people who will participate in this project do not have the income to provide their families with fresh produce. In addition, the land where they live cannot grow produce equivalent to that grown in the AHG. AHGs can produce daily, enough vegetables for a family of 3 to 4 people. AHGs will give people their own little piece of land that will help make them self sufficient and provide food security.

Arid Lands Project
We are seeking funding for the continuation of our study into resources for food security in arid lands. Specifically we hope to explore the use of Abundant Harvest Gardens as an environmentally efficient propagation and production system for perennial fruit and vegetable crops, fruit and nut trees and water efficient food resources. We will also be continuing the work begun last year on moringa as a garden vegetable, indigenous crops and food resources from other desert regions of the world that have garden potential.

In 2003 we began our arid lands research with one 4' x 4' Abundant Harvest Garden and two 2' x 4' CelluGRO Rolling Gardens. We cultivated traditional vegetables like tomatoes, peppers, squash and beans. We also tested several varieties of sweet potatoes for the both leaf and tuber production. Dandelions, Okinawa spinach, Surinam spinach, and two varieties of moringa were also planted along with marama beans,lablab beans, Ethiopian kale, okra and lemon cucumbers. The results of the first year of tests was gratifying.

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