Petals, Pedals & Plants

Resilient communities are comprised of both strong social networks and accessible resources enabling residents to address both chronic and acute shocks that may affect their health and well-being. For this reason, Grounded Strategies has partnered with Sankofa Village Community Garden and FreeRide Bicycle collective to highlight education, exercise, organization, food, and community resources in Homewood. Below is an introduction to the organization.

Free Ride Bicycle Collective is located a few blocks from the Sankofa Village Community Garden and serves the Homewood, North Point Breeze, and Wilkinsburg neighborhoods as well as the overall Pittsburgh biking community. This all-volunteer collective has worked for 15+ years to strengthen residents’ connections to biking and biking communities. Free Ride’s mission is to promote bicycling by helping people of all ages and backgrounds obtain, maintain, and repair bicycles. Like the Garden, Free Ride emphasizes access to resources and knowledge with the goal of self-determination and values the expertise community members bring. Economic status is never a hurdle.

The mission of Sankofa Village Community Garden is to eradicate the food apartheid faced by the Homewood community, to increase the community’s food self-sufficiency, and to rekindle the community’s intergenerational culture. Sankofa Village Community Garden has worked within the community to provide placed-based urban agriculture education, to increase the community’s access to food production, and to develop opportunities for entrepreneurship and employment. The Garden’s current capacity is extensive. It welcomes and is accessible to Homewood’s intergenerational community offering gardening programs for community seniors, internships and summer jobs for young adults, and programs for children enrolled in the Bara Makona Summer Camp.