The Short Story
Our local community garden in the neighborhood of East Liberty in Pittsburgh, PA, could have a significantly greater impact with the addition of a Little Free Library. It would be easily accessible on a main street and free for use by all. There are many children in the immediate surrounding area. Two large apartment buildings within a block of the garden are part of the Sojourner House MOMS organization. The MOMS organization provides supportive housing for mothers recovering from addiction. Having a little library at such a close distance gives their children and the other neighborhood kids extremely easy access to new reading opportunities. The funds raised would go towards building and maintaining the Little Free Library, stocking it with books, and adding it to the official map at littlefreelibrary.org. The library will focus on children's books, but also include a section for gardening. Your donation will be tax-deductible due to the non-profit organization East Liberty Development, Incorporated fiscally sponsoring this campaign. Your support would be very much appreciated!!
Update:
How amazing. We have already reached our
goal! Our hearts are bursting. Thank you so much to all of our
contributors. I can't wait to make this library as wonderful as it can
possibly be. To those still considering donating, don't let it stop you
that we are already at the goal! Money that exceeds the goal will let
us make the library larger, more organized, more comprehensive, and more
effective. We would also love to hear your ideas and/or suggestions on how to make the library as wonderful as possible. Leave us a comment below if you have any input. This is a project focused on the community, so we want to know what the people in the community and the people concerned about it want to see!
Also, just to clarify the perks, we will be emailing everyone who donated after the campaign is over to get your book choices and the name that you want to use for book dedications and name credit on the library wall.
Update/Challenge:
We are so close to $1000, that I wanted to extend a challenge to anyone
who is thinking about funding!! If we reach $1000, we will have a get
together for our supporters and the community at the garden to celebrate
with snacks and non-alcoholic beverages. Any children who come will be
invited to paint a square to be attached to the finished library with a
picture of their favorite fruit or vegetable or a picture representing
their favorite storybook. We would have the party in the afternoon on a
Saturday in mid- to late-June. That way we can update everyone with the
final amount of the contributions, and hopefully show some of the
progress being made on the library. And maybe there will even be some veggies straight out of the garden to snack on! Let's see if we can reach $1000!! Thanks again for all of the continued support.
The Long Story
EastField Community Garden
The EastField Community Garden is located in the 5500 block of Black St. in the Pittsburgh, PA neighborhood of East Liberty. It is an all volunteer membership co-op for nearby residents. Garden beds are assigned with shared perennials, tools, and garden wisdom.
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Some of our volunteers. From Left: Lori, Zoe, Gary, and Fiona and her daughter.
Mission Statement
EastField Garden at 5543 Black St is a co-operative project intended to:
- Provide a supportive environment for residents from Black and surrounding streets to learn and practice gardening
- Promote the use of practical, economical, and sustainable gardening methods
- Re-use vacant urban land for the benefit the community
- Share fresh produce with neighbors and local food banks
- Engage neighborhood children in the value of gardening and related earth sciences
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This community garden began as part of the 2009 MOMSGreen project, which included the transformation of two nearby abandoned lots into a children's natural play space and landscaping at four Sojourner House MOMS properties. Due to the loss of all useable top soils with 2008 building demolition, our gardeners have relied on raised beds with purchased soils and sheet mulching techniques to build arable soils at
this location.
Currently there are 45 wood-framed, raised beds (1300 square feet). Ten of those beds, containing herbs, greens, tomatoes, and strawberries, are shared by all of the gardeners and with nearby neighbors. All other beds are assigned for individual family use. Twenty families and children from the MOMS/Homeless Children’s Education Fund summer camp use the garden site; garden produce is also shared with twenty-five more low-income families who live nearby.
Fiona Seels and Gary Cirrincione handle all garden coordination, communications and organize maintenance and expansion projects. All participating households are linked by e-mail and decisions are made by consensus. Information about the garden is provided by the local community based organization, NegleyPlace, and a community garden listing on Grow Pittsburgh’s web-site. EastField’s highly visible location along a busy commuter route (pedestrian, bicycle and transit) generates year-round interest in the project.
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A view from the rear of EastField Community Garden
The gardeners have helped build 5 rain gardens, plant 65 street trees, and have installed 5 rain barrels to reduce neighborhood storm water problems. Funding and assistance for the garden has come from grants, donations, volunteers, businesses such as Whole Foods, and non-profit organizations including Grow Pittsburgh, Western PA Conservancy, and Allegheny Cleanways.
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Gary gardening with neighborhood kids
Little Free Library - Our Project!!
This community garden could have an even greater impact on the neighborhood through the installation of a Little Free Library. There are many children in the surrounding area who could benefit from free and easy access to a variety of books. The library will be split up into sections. The focus will be on young readers from a variety of age groups, but there will also be a special section for gardening.
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Two of the garden volunteers, Lori and Charlie Horowitz, lost their mother suddenly 5 years ago. She was an Elementary School Librarian for 35 years in the Pittsburgh Public School system, most recently working at Woolslair Elementary in Bloomfield. She was amazing at her job, a wonderful mother, and had a passion for reading and gardening. This Little Free Library will be built in honor of her and her love of children's books.
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Lori and Charlie's mom, Cathy Horowitz
"The more that you read, the more things you will know. The more that you learn, the more places you will go." - Dr. Seuss
Check out http://www.littlefreelibrary.org for more information on what a Little Free Library is and how it can have an effect on an area.
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A library set up recently on Kincaid St at the Kincaid Gardens in Garfield
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The kids and carpenter working on building the Kincaid Gardens library.
Where the $$$ Will Go
We need funding to get this project off of the ground.
Materials to build the Little Free Library could
range anywhere from $100 to $300 (or maybe even more). We plan to utilize reused or recycled materials as much as possible, for example at Construction Junction or local thrift and/or antique stores. The goal is to find an inexpensive and interesting piece of furniture that can be
transformed into our library. If we can't find something cool in a reasonable amount of time, we will have to build the library ourselves from scratch with materials from a home improvement store or Construction Junction. Features of the library will include a slanted roof to keep water off, door(s) with plexiglass so that people can see books inside, and a plaque dedicating it to Cathy Horowitz, children's librarian extraordinaire.
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An example of an interesting piece of furniture upcycled into a Little Library.
Installation of the Little Free Library will probably run about $30-$60.
Registering the Little Free Library with littlefreelibrary.org is $34.95. Registration includes a steward's packet, an official sign like in the picture above, and a listing on the official map.
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A stamp from littlefreelibrary.org to mark the inside of the books, letting people know that these are free books from a free library and are not for sale. The stamp costs $12.95.
There are certain children's books that were Cathy's favorites that we would definitely like to include in the initial opening of the library such as Goodnight Moon, The Giving Tree (and other Shel Silverstein books), Polar Express, etc. We would really like to start out with a good selection of quality books. Though we are going to be asking for books to be donated initially, it might be necessary to give our library a head start and purchase some books. The plan is to search all of the used book stores first, and whatever cannot be located, we will buy as cheaply as we can find. We would like to set aside a youth book budget of at least $100. Any extra money will go toward even more books!
We would also like to stock a shelf of the library with gardening resources, as one of the goals of the community garden is to educate the community about methods of gardening and the value it holds. An additional budget of $100 would go towards gardening books.
If there is enough funding, it would be nice to subscribe to a few periodicals that would benefit both the children's section of the library and the gardening. We already have a free subscription to Mother Earth News acquired through the KGI Sow It Forward garden grant. We would like to get at least one more subscription, probably to Organic Gardening ($23.94/2 years). The kids magazines we would like to subscribe to are Ranger Rick ($19.95/year), Ranger Rick, Jr. ($19.95/year), and National Geographic Kids ($15/year).
This makes our budget at a bare minimum about$180, if we relied strictly on donated books and were able to build the library for $100 or less. If we were able to spend the money we would like to on books and if the library itself cost $300 to build, the total budget would be at most $700. Either way, we are determined to make this project happen, even if it is not as fully stocked as we would like!
Other Ways You Can Help
If you cannot contribute monetarily, we understand, but there are other ways to help!
- Get the word out for us! Share our campaign on social media, tell your friends and family!
- Donate books to our library! Contact us if you have donations and we can tell you how to get them to us.
Thank you so much for reading, and hopefully your contributions can get a lot more people reading in the very near future!!!
