At the 10th Annual Planning Day, hosted by the Sitka Health Summit, participants cast the most votes for a community garden and a non-profit that combines various food groups in Sitka. (Emmett Williams/KCAW photo)
The Sitka Health Summit held its 10th annual Planning Day on Friday (10-21-16). The crowd of 75 gathered at University of Alaska Southeast (UAS) to brainstorm wellness initiatives and through a blind vote, chose two projects with direct ties to food.
The first, to be completed within a year, is a community garden. The second project, to be completed over several years, is an umbrella non-profit for all of Sitka’s food organizations.
Dave Nuetzel used to coordinate a garden run by Community Schools, behind Blatchley Middle School. But when the operation shut down last year, he decided to advocate for a non-commercial community garden at the Health Summit. The group took over the Blatchley Community Gardens Facebook page.
A new plot hasn’t been chosen, but Nuetzel wants to find a space where Sitkans without land or adequate sun exposure can farm a patch of earth. Over the phone with KCAW today (10-24-16), he said, “One of the goals will be to start looking for different spots within the town, whether it’s on city land or private land or unusable land. People have talked about areas of slide risk as land that might be available since there won’t be structures there.”
The other project seeks to bring together Sitka’s many food organizations – from local markets and gardens, to kitchens, farms, and coops – into one non-profit. The hope is to collaborate more often to avoid burning out board members and volunteers through duplicate efforts. A press release issued today (10-24-16) said the nonprofit’s overall goal is to make sure that, ‘Every Sitkan has access to healthy, affordable food.’
The Sitka Health Summit’s annual planning day was held at UAS. About 75 people attended and brainstormed wellness ideas around physical activity, nutrition, mental health, and equity. (Photo courtesy of Doug Osborne)
The Sitka Health Summit has been successful at launching food-centric projects before. That includes the Sitka Farmer’s Market, Sitka Kitch, and the Fish-to-Schools program. It didn’t surprise Health Summit Program Manager Zachary Desmond that food continues to be a powerful organizing force. “It’s the greatest concern people have about health in Sitka: the affordability of healthy food in their community. Everybody is acknowledging that from different demographics and different communities. People are in deep relationship with that issue,” Desmond said.
The Summit recently conducted a community-wide health assessment. Their data identified high food costs and the need for food assistance as the #2 threat for Sitkans. #1 was declining state and federal revenue.
Since the projects are chosen by popular vote, food projects have a lot of support among returning participants In light of that, Desmond also voiced a desire to choose a different type of health project and broaden participation for Planning Day.
“What would it look like to have community member that have themselves identified as “non-health-summiters” attend? That wouldn’t go to that kind of event because they have kids and because they need to work 2-3 jobs and can’t take that time?,” Desmond asked. He added, “We may realize in the future that the most relevant iteration of the Health Summit isn’t the Planning Day at all, but is in fact a more composite sort of event where we’re collecting information and collecting ideas.”
The two projects will each receive $2000 in seed money and facilitation services from Sitka Health Summit staff. The kick-off meeting for the community garden is Thursday, November 3rd at 6 p.m., while the meeting to initiate a overarching non-profit for food organizations is Thursday, November 10th at 6:30 p.m. Both meetings will be held at Harrigan Centennial Hall.
The Sitka Health Summit also honored Girl Scouts Troop 4140 for spearheading the installation of a flashing crosswalk at the intersection of Halibut Point Road and Peterson Street.
