January 24, 2025

Local Action with International Connections

In the past decade, most of my life takes place less than five kilometres from home, and yet, during this period, I think I’ve met more people from multiple places around the world than I ever did as a journalist or travel industry employee.

I’m a cofounder and leader in a local nonprofit solidarity cooperative called Coopérative de solidarité Abondance Urbaine Solidaire, a mouthful that we simply call CAUS (pronounced cause). We co-organize a farmers’ market in Verdun, and through that, I’ve worked with amazing people who have links to Africa, Australia, Asia, Central America, Europe and Southern America. These small producers use their expertise to create local products with foreign roots, including chocolate, coffee, eggplants, flowers, plants, salsa, seeds, soap and toys.

Our members have links to people in Afghanistan, China, Japan, the Eukraine and Russia, and we hear about their challenges. They bring friends and relatives from overseas to visit our homesteading hub and community centre Multi-CAUS, which is located in a food desert. They also take tours of our demonstration compost production site and gardens in Grand Potager, a local urban agriculture resource centre in the Verdun municipal greenhouses. Last summer, we hosted visiters from Cameroon, the Czech Republic and Kenya.

Visitors learn how we try to strengthen links between city dwellers and farmers in the regions of Quebec. We share our efforts encouraging urbanites to cook and grow their own food as often as possible and to support ethical local producers to eat well. Together, we talk about the rising cost of food, the challenges running a local food bank and how we can make healthy ethical foods more accessible.

Our visitors share how they run urban agriculture projects in their home countries and together we discuss similar challenges despite disparate cultures and circumstances. How do you help people grow their own food when land is expensive or contaminated, cooking and gardening skills are rare, and delicious local vegetables are undervalued compared to cheap ready-prepared meals regularly promoted by multi-nationals?

Now, through some of those amazing connections, I’m part of a delegation of urban agriculture experts going to Nairobi, Kenya. Our visit was arranged by Rooftops Canada, a Toronto-based nonprofit organization that works to improve housing conditions, sustainable communities and equitable global development around the world. Their Nairobi-based partner, Mazingira Institute, will be hosting us from January 27th to February 7th, 2025, as part of their Women’s Spaces project.

This study visit is aimed at promoting cross-learning and exchange between Mazingira Institute, Nairobi City County (municipality), and Canadian urban agriculture, land and housing sector professionals.

I already got a lot of ideas from our discussions in Verdun last October, but the opportunity to see how non-profits handle urban agriculture challenges in Nairobi is so exciting!

They’ve already shared some videos of the projects we may visit. I’m looking forward to meeting the innovators behind Gerald and Gladys’ cone gardens,

Peter Mburu’s hydroponics

and Nancy Wambui’s raised beds.

We are already going to try their cone beds in some of our local volunteer-run gardens, but I’m sure that we’ll get even more ideas when we meet them in person.

About

Tracey Arial

Unapologetically Canadian Tracey Arial promotes creative entrepreneurship as an author, cooperative business leader, gardener, family historian and podcaster.

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