Tiago Renê Torres Da Silva leaves details in every tool he forges. Details that have stories. Silva, a blacksmith by trade, takes disarmed guns and turns them into garden tools.
Maybe the detail is a scratch on the barrel or a front sight that will be incorporated into the garden tool he’ll soon reshape.
“You want them to know it [once] was a gun,” he said.
Silva might not know who the gun belonged to or the story behind it, but he knows the pain from gun violence. Growing up in a small town in Brazil, Silva had friends die by gunfire. “There’s a lot of things that happened with guns there that I don’t like,” he said.
Silva emigrated to the States in 2016, but he hardly left gun culture behind. That’s because he now lives in New Mexico, where gun ownership clocks in at about 50 percent, compared to the national average of 30 percent.
So it makes sense that New Mexico has higher firearm mortality rates than the country’s average — a rate that has increased nearly twice as fast in New Mexico than in the rest of the country. For Silva, speaking of his life in Brazil, “only the police and bad guys have guns.” But in New Mexico, “it feels like everyone has a gun.”
Silva now works for New Mexicans to Prevent Gun Violence (NMPGV), a nonprofit that works to reduce gun violence through programming and training. One program, called Guns to Gardens, buys back guns and transforms them into gardening tools.
“We take better care of our guns than our people here,” said Miranda Viscoli, the co-president of NMPGV.
About two and a half years ago, Viscoli was brainstorming with a friend, and they came up with Guns to Gardens, modeled off of a similar program called RAWtools, which we recently reported on. Guns to Gardens is a buyback program where gun owners anonymously turn in their weapons and receive gift cards in return.
After rates of gun violence spiked across the nation in the mid-1990s, nonprofits, police departments and communities turned to buyback programs in an attempt to lessen gun violence.
Research shows that buybacks might not be the best solution to ending gun violence. In general, households that participated in buybacks still retained ownership of at least one gun and the guns collected are usually the least likely to be used in crimes.
Sabrina Arredondo Mattson, a research associate at the Center for the Study and Prevention of Violence, said although buybacks are ineffective when it comes to lowering violence, there may be potential for buybacks to raise awareness.
“It depends on what your goal is, if the goal is to build awareness, then that may be working,” Arredondo Mattson said. “If the goal and what you’re trying to do is reduce youth gun violence, that’s not an effective approach.”
Viscoli said she kept hearing similar criticisms, but when she saw pictures of a gun buyback in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and saw how many assault weapons and automatic handguns were turned in, she said, “We will do gun buybacks.”
Viscoli said a third of the weapons they receive are semiautomatic handguns and assault weapons, which are the most common guns used in crimes.
Buybacks paired with other NMPGV initiatives, like student pledge campaigns and public education, can have an impact. Gun buybacks might remove only a small percentage of a community’s weapons, but it provides a way for people to take action while showing support for victims, and also raise awareness of issues around gun violence.
Arredondo Mattson agreed that gun buybacks may work as supplemental programming. “Combined with other strategies that are aimed at and have been shown to reduce gun violence then it might be a good add on.” But she stressed that evidence-based prevention programs are the most successful strategy to lower violence.
The difference between NMPGV’s program and a typical buyback is that the gun’s life doesn’t stop there. The guns are dismantled and brought to Silva, who reshapes them into gardening tools. The money from the garden tools is used to purchase more gift cards for buybacks.
Which propels the cycle of awareness. NMPGV hosted seven gun buybacks in the past two years and collected over 400 guns.
“We see firsthand that these are objects that people really don’t want in their home, people don’t feel safe with them anymore,” Viscoli said. “And this gives them the opportunity to get rid of them.”
Viscoli said a majority of the guns are from parents who don’t want a gun in the house, widows who have no idea what to do with their partner’s guns and families with members who have suicidal thoughts or dementia. About 95 percent have brought guns in because of safety issues, Viscoli said.
“There’s a sense of relief on their face,” she said. “They’re so grateful we can take these guns.”
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Tag: Gardens
Bringing Bhutanese Village Life to Refugees in New Hampshire
Getting down and dirty in the garden offers a multitude of health benefits.
And now, a community garden in Concord, New Hampshire is helping Bhutanese refugees with homesickness by recreating the village atmosphere they miss.
Ghana Khatiwada, a translator fluent in Nepali and English who works as a cultural liasion for the garden, told Megan Doyle of the Concord Monitor, “To them, it’s like a home feeling to come here and work in a garden,” she said.
The Sycamore Field Community Garden charges only $15 for a plot each season, so even the most impoverished refugees can participate. Organizers give away free seedlings to the immigrants.
While all this sounds great, it isn’t problem free. Each year, there’s a giant waiting list for the 138 garden plots available; this season, 70 families entered a lottery for the four open slots.
The lucky winners of plots emerge from the growing season well-fed, with extra cash in their pockets. “We are saving a lot of money,” gardener Ghana Khatiwada told Doyle. “In the winter, we spent a lot of money on vegetables like tomatoes, okra, eggplants.”
Ideally, garden manager Cheryl Bourassa would expand the garden, but she’s limited due to the amount of available water. To increase the number of plots, the nonprofit, which relies on grants and donations for its funding, would have to dig a new well — at a cost of $15,000. So recently, they filmed a video of the bustling activity in the garden to feature on Faithify, a crowdfunding website that will launch next month. Lea Smith, who shot the video, told Doyle, “Maybe somebody in Idaho will be inspired to help refugee farmers in Concord, New Hampshire.”
It’s clear that the atmosphere in The Sycamore Field Community Gardens is worth sustaining. Bourassa told Doyle that in the summer when the plants are burgeoning and the gardeners are there to tend them, “It’s almost like a little social club. It’s this real sense of life in a village.”
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From Seed to Harvest, These Green Thumbs Nourish Chicago School Gardens
Gardens are a good thing. Period. But in an inner-city school, they’re wonderful. They provide hands-on lessons on how plants grow and encourage kids to eat nutritiously. Plus, the green space beautifies the school.
But starting a school garden and maintaining it turns out to be more complicated than some might think. That’s because everyone is excited to plant one initially, but if teachers are solely responsible for their upkeep, they can become too busy with classroom duties and might not be around over the summer when the plants need tending.
Fortunately, that’s where the nonprofit Gardeneers comes in. It offers a program to plant gardens at Chicago schools and maintain them while also providing lesson plans and a weekly visiting teacher.
Teach for America alumni May Tsupros and Adam Zmick, who founded the Gardeneers, explain on a crowd fundraising website that their model for becoming rotating garden specialists is based on the idea of a visiting speech pathologist, who rotates to a different school each day of the week. The Gardeneers rotate among schools, teaching lessons during school related to the curriculum in such subjects as chemistry, biology, and nutrition, and then enlist the kids’ help to tend the plants in the after school garden clubs.
During the summer, the nonprofit organizes neighborhood volunteers to help keep the plants thriving. The Gardeneers make sure the garden’s produce reaches the children’s lunch plates, coordinating with cafeteria staff to ensure everybody gets to taste the bounty.
According to Cortney Ahem of Food Tank, the Gardeneers offer their services throughout the growing season to schools for a maximum of $10,000, compared to the $35,000 some companies charge for garden installations alone.
Three Chicago schools have jumped at the chance to work with the Gardeneers this growing season, and Zmick and Tsupros hope to expand that to 50 schools during the next five years. They plan to focus on schools where 90 percent or more of the students qualify for free or reduced lunch.
Zmick told Ahem, “School gardens are incredibly important from an educational perspective. There’s so much data about how these gardens can improve academic outcomes, reduce discipline problems, develop job skills, and strengthen the local community.”
Tsupros thinks gardens can be the key to national renewal. “I believe with all my heart that food, nutrition, and community are the foundations on which we need to build and focus our attention regarding education in Chicago and all the United States. One small seed can grow a bountiful harvest, and I hope that Gardeneers can be that seed.”
MORE: Read About The Nonprofit That Grows Not Just Food, But A Community Too
Read About the Nonprofit That Grows Not Just Food, But a Community, Too
What activity can decrease a low-income family’s dependence on food assistance, promote health, reduce crime, and bring people of different income and education levels together? Gardening can accomplish all this and more.
Since botanist and garden enthusiast Larry Stebbins responded to the lack of community gardens in Colorado Springs, Colorado by starting the nonprofit Pikes Peak Urban Gardens (PPUG) in 2007, hundreds of volunteers have become involved in creating plots in low-income neighborhoods and educating their new owners on how to tend them. “By teaching others how to [garden], you empower them to be more in control of their food supply,” Stebbins told J. Adrian Stanley of the Colorado Springs Independent.
Case in point: Stebbins said that one low-income family participating in the PPUG expanded the garden volunteers had helped them plant and were able to reduce using food stamps by 70 percent during the summer months when tomatoes, zucchinis, and other produce was abundant.
Another benefit to gardening? The nonprofit has learned over the years that when the plots are physically close together in proximity, not only is a feeling of community created, but also an atmosphere in which gardeners learn from and share with each other. Now it plants “pods” of gardens, such as the nine clustered gardens they established in a low-income neighborhood this year with the help of a $3,000 grant from the Colorado Home and Garden Show.
In addition to helping people plant their own gardens, Pikes Peak Urban Gardens has established two urban farms that grow produce for charities; some of the homeless people that benefit from the produce pitch in to tend those crops, alongside volunteers from all walks of life. Stebbins told Stanley that one year, a doctor and a man who lived in subsidized housing struck up a garden-based friendship. “People come in their dungarees,” he said. “You don’t know if they’re rich, poor or whatever. And it’s a great equalizer, and it’s a great way for people to come together.” After all, we’re all united in our quest for that perfect tomato.
MORE: Thriving Gardens Now Grow in a Denver Food Desert
Thriving Gardens Now Grow in a Denver Food Desert
After graduating from the University of Denver in 2007, pals Joseph Teipel and Eric Kornacki headed south, to Guatemala where they participated in a service project.
Inspired by the work they did there, the two returned home to help poor communities here in the United States. Their goal is a lofty one: They want to foster self-sufficient communities nationwide that grow their own healthy food. But for now, they’re starting small by making a difference in one city.
In 2009, Teipel and Kornacki formed the non-profit, Re:Vision, and launched their first program, Re:Farm, to help low-income people living in a food desert in southwest Denver. Their first project included planting a school garden at Kepner Middle School, designing irrigated backyard gardens for seven families, teaching families how to grow their own food, and mentoring at-risk middle schoolers through gardening. In 2010, their work was rewarded with an $80,000 grant from the National Convergence Partnership to study how gardening can be used to prevent violence and implement programs. From there, they began hiring community promotoras to spread the word about healthy food and teach other people in their neighborhood how to garden.
Much like the gardens themselves, Re:Vision is growing. Last season, 200 families participated in the backyard garden program, producing 28,000 pounds of fruits and vegetables. A hundred families are on a waiting list for a garden, and the organization hopes to meet that demand this year, with the help of a $50,000 Slow Money Entrepreneur of the Year award and a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture.
They’re also launching a program called “Dig it Forward,” through which people who want to help can hire Re:Vision workers to design and plant gardens. The proceeds from these garden sales will pay for free gardens in low-income people’s yards. Taipel told Helen Hu of North Denver Tribune, “It’s a way of thinking outside the box. We have a lot of expertise, and if people want to start gardens and help others, it’s a win-win.”
Patricia Grado, an immigrant from Chihuahua, Mexico, serves as one of the promatoras, told Hu, “I’ve reaffirmed my understanding about how to grow our own food, about food sustainability, nutrition, and among other things, how to help the community with my knowledge.”
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