Thank you, Native Wildflower Nursery
Welcoming our new WILD Manager, Sky Kili - and also, thank you to King Conservation District
Welcoming our new WILD Program Manager, Sky Kili – and also, thank you to King Conservation District
InterIm CDA would like to welcome our new WILD Program Manager, Sky Kili. Sky has a background in sustainability, community organizing, and youth development. We want to thank Malika Aiyer, who worked as our Program Manager for one year and was with the program for a year and a half. Malika oversaw several successful projects with the WILD program, which included developing our Seed to Plate curriculum with the youth and outdoor experience programming.
We also want to thank the King Conservation District (KCD) for their continued support of the WILD program and our Danny Woo Community Garden. Their support has and will continue to provide the resources to create more significant food equity and food access in the CID and provide greater development opportunities to disadvantaged youth. KCD’s support has allowed youth participants to gain leadership skills and a greater understanding of sustainability. Here are photos of our WILD youth and elders from the community teaming up to prepare culturally relevant foods together.
Photos of the 47th annual pig roast in the Danny Woo Garden in July 2023
Thank you to all who joined us at the annual pig roast last month! And huge thanks to those who provided financial support and donated food and time, including our pig roast sponsor Enterprise Community Partners, our gardeners and community members, Tai Tung, Fort St. George, Uwajimaya, and Starbucks. And very big thank you to our garden staff, KaeLi Deng and Kathryn Tehl for all their work on the event!
Department of Neighborhoods Food Equity Fund grants InterIm CDA Danny Woo Garden and WILD $100,000
Department of Neighborhoods Food Equity Fund grants InterIm CDA Danny Woo Garden and WILD $100,000
Seattle – The City of Seattle Department of Neighborhoods (DON) has awarded the Danny Woo Garden in Chinatown-International District (CID) and the Wilderness Inner-City Leadership program $100,000 through the Food Equity Fund to support intergenerational learning programs and infrastructure upgrades and repairs that will support community needs in the garden. The Food Equity Fund is a DON program whose purpose is to invest in community-led work that contributes to an equitable and sustainable local food system.
Specifically, this funding will support operations in the Danny Woo Garden in the following ways:
- Provide equitable and culturally specific food sources in the Danny Woo Garden for low-income, immigrant, refugee, Asian, and Pacific Islander elders in the CID;
- Provide intergenerational information sharing and learning between elders and API youth about food systems, food justice, and food security through the garden to maintain cultural and ethnic food traditions;
- Provide funds for infrastructure repairs to maintain sustainable food systems in the garden.
The Danny Woo Garden was created through community activism in 1975 and since then has been a vital source of food security and of maintaining culturally appropriate sources of food for low-income, immigrant, refugee, Asian, and Pacific Islander elders in the CID. Currently, 66 elderly residents utilize close to 100 plots in the 1.5-acre community garden. Over the years, the Danny Woo Garden has fed hundreds of elders. It has also improved their physical and mental health by providing space to be physically and socially active.
Funding will support programs that bring elders and youth together to learn about seed-to-plate practices, culturally specific recipes based on what gardeners have grown, the physical health value of maintaining a healthy diet of ethnic produce, and more. InterIm CDA’s youth program, Wilderness Inner-city Leadership Development (WILD), engages 40-100 low-income API teens ages 14-19 in year-round programming, and the Danny Woo Garden provides a live outdoor classroom for WILD programming that supports two tenets of WILD youth programming: Building intergenerational relationships between API immigrant elders and youth; and learning the value of an organic, culturally relevant garden’s place in a low-income BIPOC community food system.
Time spent together in the garden among elders and youth creates conversations and experiential information-sharing among generations around concepts of food justice in low-income immigrant and refugee populated communities. Youth gain a holistic understanding of how critical it is for underserved, immigrant communities and individuals to grow what they eat and have access to healthy, organic, culturally relevant, sustainably grown produce.
“Our vision for food equity and sustainability is to honor what our CID community of immigrants and refugees has given up when they’ve left their home countries, usually out of necessity, by giving them space to hold onto their cultural food practices,” said Pradeepta Upadhyay, Executive Director of InterIm CDA. “We also want to ensure this knowledge is passed down to younger generations. We want these culturally unique ties to the land and growing practices to continue here in the CID. This is why we’ve created infrastructure in the garden to support a learning environment for youth.”
Funding will also support much needed infrastructure repairs and ongoing maintenance in the culturally and ethnically responsive garden including for the pig roast pit, chicken coop, one toolshed, the outdoor cookery, maintaining a seed library to offer free seeds to the CID community and garden visitors, cisterns, a boardwalk that allows access to the garden plots, flower beds, and fences and handrails necessary for safety of the elders.
“The garden gave the land back to the old folks who left it in the old country to strike it rich here. They never realized how much they missed the earth,” wrote Bob Santos in his memoir, Humbows Not Hotdogs, about seeing how the creation of the Danny Woo Garden gave back to the elders in the CID and how much they’ve used the garden. This funding helps support this legacy in the CID.
For more information on all awardees, see the DON press release.
Contact: jwasberg@interimcda.org
47th Annual Pig Roast Volunteer Recruitment
47th Annual Pig Roast: July 21 and 22
Summertime’s in the air – and in the CID! Which means the pig roast is coming up! Join us on July 21 and 22 for the 47th annual pig roast. Volunteer registration for the pig roast is now live; see shifts here. We roast the pig all night long Friday into Saturday morning will be in need of help all 24 hours. Contact volunteer@interimcda.org for more information. And come one come all for the Friday community gathering with food and drinks and enjoying the garden. We can’t wait to see you and catch up with you all!
Special thanks to Enterprise Community Housing for their support of the pig roast!
Thank you, Enterprise for sponsoring InterIm CDA's 46th Annual Pig Roast
Thank you to our sponsor Enterprise for making the InterIm CDA 46th Annual Pig Roast a great event!
46th Annual InterIm CDA Pig Roast was a SUCCESS!
The 46th Annual InterIm pig roast was a huge success!
Thank you to all those who came and those who supported us! Special shout out to ICHS Legacy House, Phnom Penh Noodle House, Gourmet Noodle Bowl, Crawfish King, and all the volunteers who helped make it happen, along with all those who came! Keep an eye out for the Pig Roast next year!
The 46th Annual Pig Roast happening TODAY!
The 46th Annual Pig Roast is happening TODAY at 6 PM!
InterIm CDA’s 46th Annual Pig Roast will be hosted at the Danny Woo Garden! The Pig Roast allows us to connect with each other through storytelling and in-person connection. Bring your family and friends, all are welcome!
Save the Date! InterIm CDA 46th Annual Pig Roast
Save the Date!
InterIm CDA is hosting its 46th Annual Pig Roast in person! It will be hosted in the Danny Woo Garden, and it will take place on July 15 – 16. Make sure to mark the dates on your calendars!
The continuing legacy of volunteers in the Danny Woo Community Garden
There is no community garden without community.
The Danny Woo Community Garden is a sanctuary to its users in the Chinatown-International District, and it is an ever-changing space that demands constant maintenance and tender loving care. Its evolution and perseverance over the past four and a half decades are due to those dedicated groups and individuals who believe in the inherent value of green public space in the Chinatown-International District and – most importantly – aren’t afraid to get their hands dirty. From the stairs, to the benches, to the artwork, almost every structure in the historic garden not built by a gardener was built by volunteer students or volunteer contractors. Even the seed-to-plate curriculum we teach in the Danny Woo Children’s Garden was created by the thoughtful work of a volunteer educator. It’s in this spirit that has kept the garden around over the years, and it’s in this spirit that the garden was created in 1975.
They probably didn’t call themselves volunteers back then but galvanized by the Asian American activist movement in the ‘60s and ‘70s, the first iteration of the garden was built by young people who had a vision for justice and the willingness to work. Facilitated by an innovative partnership between landowner Danny Woo and neighborhood activist “Uncle Bob” Santos, the humble hillside of weeds was transformed into a terraced oasis for neighborhood elders to grow vegetables, share food, and make friends.
Today we continue to value our partnerships with the many volunteer groups that visit and help in the garden, and we certainly couldn’t maintain the vast 1.5-acre footprint without them. Since January of 2019 we have hosted over 500 volunteers, which range from interested individuals, college classes, large foundations, and neighborhood groups. We would like to publicly thank them all for their friendship, support, and hard work. Here we’d like to take the opportunity to highlight just four of our volunteer heroes:
THE GATES FOUNDATION
On June 22nd we hosted the Gates Foundation for their Foundation Day of Caring. The Seattle-based foundation is the largest private philanthropy in the world, and we had the amazing opportunity to host CEO Susan Desmond-Hellman herself, along with 20 employees. While Susan was enthusiastically weeding, deep amongst a pile of blackberry bramble and bindweed, she listened to us tell her about the current struggles facing our low-income immigrant community and the importance of keeping healthy green space, affordable housing, and culturally appropriate social services in the neighborhood. Working with an organization like the Gates Foundation is incredibly important for the survival of programs like the Danny Woo Community Garden, and we are grateful for their continued support of the garden and of many of the programs at InterIm Community Development Association.
THE MISSION CONTINUES
The Mission Continues is a non-profit organization that serves veterans and connects them to meaningful community service projects. We are incredibly lucky to work with veteran volunteers who bring boundless enthusiasm and fun into the garden for each service project. Linh Thai, the City Impact Manager for Seattle, Tacoma, and Portland, has worked in the International District for many years. He brings individuals and families associated with veteran groups like Vets in Tech and Code Fellows to do a lot of literal heavy lifting in the garden and does a lot of the physical work himself! Since 2017 Linh and others have been our most consistent volunteer partners who bring not only people power, but donations and resources as well.
CITY FRUIT
The Danny Woo Community Garden is home to one of the most diverse mature fruit orchards in Seattle. With over 60 Asian pear, plum, apple, and cherry trees, we need a whole lot of help maintaining the orchard. City Fruit is a non-profit organization that helps care for urban fruit trees, provides classes, and brings volunteers to prune, harvest, and nurture trees so that no food is wasted. They volunteered twice in September, harvesting over 500 pounds of apples and pears from our trees. They were all given to gardeners or donated to local food banks, including ACRS Food Bank.
BOY SCOUTS TROOP 254
This Boy Scouts Troop is based in the Chinese Baptist Church in Beacon Hill, under the leadership of Scout Master Tim Louie. We are currently the site of two Eagle Scout projects from this troop. Jiawei Hu decided to do his Eagle Scout project in the garden and re-build stairs in a neglected and steep section near the entrance on Washington St. He said he wanted to do a project somewhere where it was needed, and that it would be an honor to give back to a beautiful community garden that serves a large group of elderly folks. “I hope the stairs we built will encourage more people to look after the well-being of the garden and make it a more welcoming place,” he said. “The new stairs will be much safer for the elderly gardeners to walk on, and so I hope walking on our stairs will make their day.” Nathaniel Wai, another Eagle Scout with Troop 254, is currently re-building a lookout structure in the garden to rebuild one that was first created in the early 90s by University of Washington students.
This beloved public space would not be possible without the support and efforts of volunteers, who have been responsible for the building and upkeep of the garden since young Asian American activists carried heavy timbers up the slopes to create the garden terraces. It has truly been made from the blood, sweat, and tears of hardworking people for almost 45 years!
The Danny Woo Community Garden hosts community volunteer days every first Saturday of the month. Join us for our next workday on October 5th 10:00 AM – 1:00 PM. Bring a water bottle and wear close-toed shoes. For more information visit www.dannywoogarden.org or email us at volunteer@interimcda.org.
