Help the 5th & Mercy Garden Grow through micro-granting at the Philly Stake Dinner!

Philly Food Forests was accepted as a competitor in the next Philly Stake micro-grant dinner!


When: Sunday, January 30th, 5:00pm-8:00pm
Where: First Unitarian Church, 2125 Chestnut Street (22nd & Chestnut, Center City - map)
How much: Only $10-$20 (sliding scale) for a delicious organic, locally-sourced meal with beautiful people


What is Philly STAKE, you ask? It's an incredible way to invest & have a direct impact on the progress of a community-based project in the city. The website explaining the dinner is here, and the Food Forests proposal can be found here.

From their website: Philly Stake is a locally sourced, recurring dinner in which money is raised for creative & relevant community engaged projects. As a micro granting program, community members become creators & have:
A stake in the Philadelphia community;
A stake in the arts and in creative thought;
A stake in local organic food; &
A stake in the local economy.

On January 30th, Philadelphians are invited to the First Uni to enjoy a seasonal, locally-sourced meal and vote for the project they deem most worthy of funding. The presenter garnering the most votes will leave with the dinner proceeds and will give a project update at the next Stake event. Tickets for diners will be sold at the door on a first-come-first-serve basis; the cost for the event is $10-$20 (sliding scale), cash only.


From the proposal:

1. Describe the project a STAKE Grant would help you accomplish: The 500 Block of Mercy Street in South Philadelphia currently has eighteen vacant lots. Philly Food Forests is a grassroots organization in pursuit of transforming these vacant lots into a space for public use, community and partner organization gardens, an orchard, a pollinator garden, mushroom beds, rainwater harvesting, composting, free produce distribution, and neighborhood educational programming. Since starting in mid-September 2010, Philly Food Forests has cleared twelve of the eighteen lots for the first time in long-term neighborhood residents’ memories and gained legal permission to garden on seven of them.

2. How will you use the grant toward the realization of your project? $750 is your imaginary budget: In its first planting season, the goal is to construct a compost bin mostly from recycled materials, set up a rainwater harvesting system, build and plant two 100 square foot biointensive gardening beds, build and inoculate a 3-season mushroom bed, and salvage or purchase used outdoor furniture for gatherings.

3. A little about yourself and what led you to your current creative goals. This may include a previous project of yours, ways it both succeeded and failed (this can be entirely unrelated to your proposal): Robyn Mello, founder of Philly Food Forests, is a community organizer, activist, and gardener enlivened by her work to fight for equal access to resources, push for environmental justice, engender conscious living, educate for individual empowerment, bolster the local economy, build community, promote holistic health, and lead by example. Besides the Mercy Street project, she is leading a community garden start-up on 5th and Moore Streets in South Philadelphia and volunteering with the East Kensington Community Food Cooperative, the Philadelphia Orchard Project, Neighborhood Bikeworks, and the Emerald Street Urban Farm. In the off-season, she is learning new skills and making money doing home renovations. 

4. Why is this project important? How will it benefit the community?: The neighborhood in South Philadelphia where this green space is located is currently overlooked by public and private improvement ventures, and it is unrepresented by a civic association. The people surrounding the eighteen lots have had trouble keeping drug trafficking, crime, and illegal dumping off their sparsely populated street, and they have all embraced the project with open arms because they believe it has positively transformed their everyday experience and will continue to do so as it grows. In addition, this project will provide access to fresh-picked produce in the community and assist with the city’s stormwater management strategy.

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Please attend this great event to help support a new way of funding grassroots projects & assist Philly Food Forests. The projected amount of money that will come out of this dinner will be enough to completely fund the first year & open up the opportunity to apply for other grants once other institutions see financial progress. And tell all your friends!